


Seolfren

by vacanthands



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Also includes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Asexual Mordred, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams, Episode: s01e08 The Beginning of the End, Episode: s02e03 The Nightmare Begins (Merlin), Episode: s05e01 Arthur's Bane, Episode: s05e05 The Disir, Fix-It, Gen, Good Mordred (Merlin), Magic, Origin Story, Sad, Sad with a Happy Ending, Season/Series 05, Telepathy, Wordcount: 50.000-100.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 58,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26819575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vacanthands/pseuds/vacanthands
Summary: The name, though, stays in his mind for days afterwards. Emrys. The weight of it strikes Mordred like the first beam of sunlight in spring, like a mountain settling itself across his shoulders. Heavy and wonderful. The name of the universe.(Or, how Mordred goes from the beginning to the end, and what changes along the way.)
Relationships: Kara & Mordred (Merlin), Merlin & Mordred (Merlin)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25
Collections: Merlin Canon 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Spark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5997763) by [Rastaban](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rastaban/pseuds/Rastaban). 
  * Inspired by [Set in Stone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3552056) by [EachPeachPearPlum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EachPeachPearPlum/pseuds/EachPeachPearPlum). 



The first thing he sees is golden.

The sun, caught on thin ice at noon. A meadowflower, glorious in full splendour, a heady kind of life caught close and held tight. Enough fire to raze a city of stone to the ground in a heartbeat.

A wave of images floods his vision, and he freezes under the onslaught. Too many to sort. Too many to possibly understand. Mountains and valleys and forests and white stone and red skies and he jerks back from the pool. Its surface fades to glimmering silver, the images scattering and dissipating like early-morning mist.

He glances over at the camp elder, and then at his mother. Wordlessly, she gathers him into a hug, and he presses his head into her shoulder so he will not have to see the unreadable expression on her face.

After three days, he returns to the pool, alone. This time, visions drift past like smoke clouds, hazy and indistinct but there. The last, when it comes, is perfectly clear.

A man with golden eyes stands atop a cliffside, calling the light out of the sky.

A King on bended knee turns and stands, parrying a swing.

A black-clad soldier, with black hair and brown skin and grey, grey eyes, runs him through.

The King falls to his knees.

"You gave me no choice."

He feels but does not see a hand grabbing at his chest, a sharp, sharp stab in his side, and oh.

Oh.

The sword withdraws, pulling a breath out of his chest, quick and painful.

A slow, sad smile creeps onto his face, and he stares at the man he has just condemned to death.

The ground hits his knees, and he is gone.


	2. Genesis

His birth anniversary is in late winter, when it has almost forgotten enough of its cold to be spring, when the snow melts from the mountains in the south and the rivers swell. Grass pushes its way stubbornly into the open air, and he spends the first day of his sixth year wandering by the river. He trails his fingers absently in the water as he goes, and specks of silver sweep away into the stream, mingling with the irregular ice. Fish swarm around his hand, nosing at his knuckles, and he smiles.

Kara comes to fetch him early in the evening, and finds him sitting above an embankment with his boots off and his feet dangling into the water. The stones are cold. In her palm sits a small flame, dancing orange, and he grabs her hand as she pulls him up, mostly just to see the light blink out. She smiles and flicks his face, affectionately, eyes trained on his shoulders. "Come on, Mordred. Let's get back."

It's a short walk: as the only children in the camp, they are not permitted to wander far on their own. Mordred follows Kara along her particular route back, taking care to go exactly behind her and not deviate from her carefully-designed path. That night, they sit by the campfire and hear the adults whispering. There are so few of them, now, their numbers dwindling in the face of endless raids, culled by harsh winters and unkind summers.

Elan, his mother, pulls the two of them away from the fire when the conversation begins in earnest, and they return as a trio to her tent. Mordred takes the yarrow and rosemary out of his pockets and offers them shyly, and she tucks a feather of purple lavender behind his ear, matching the sprig of violet against her own dark skin. He adjusts the flower carefully, making sure not to disturb the blooms, while Kara cuts a few slices of sweetbread. The scent of it fills his nose, and his mouth waters even as Elan decants his findings into two small glass jars next to the ground sunflower seeds.

When the fire has burned low and they are done eating, Mordred climbs into bed, where Kara is already waiting. She makes a show of sighing and shifting over as he wriggles into their shared mess of blankets and skins, but gives him an affectionate poke before she extinguishes the candle.

_Goodnight, Kara._

_Goodnight, Mor._

He sleeps, and dreams of gold.

In the weeks that follow, many visions come to chase him out of his slumber: fire, and blood, and Camelot soldiers in their violent red. Fully half his nights, though, something sharp and cold and fast pulls him apart and he wakes sweating in the dark, Kara murmuring in her sleep beside him. On Imbolc, the spring festal day that is also Kara's anniversary, he dances with her around the fire late into the night, until the songs start in earnest and the noise begins to bother her. He falls asleep with songs of light and growth and the new season in his ears, and wakes to lightning and thunder and the clash of a King's sword on his own. In the morning, Kara feels the glittering sharpness of his grief and wraps his mind in her own. That night, for the first time since he had seen what he should not know, he sleeps soundly, drowning out the bend of unreality around him with the wonderful warmth of Kara's mind.

Sometimes, when they wrap themselves so close together neither can tell where one ends and the other begins, Mordred sees flashes of a brown-haired woman with soft, pale skin the shade of eggshells. Fragile and beautiful. Mordred has no memory of their shared mother, the woman he never had the chance to know. Kara's father had been long gone by the time Elan had met Gisa, Kara's mother, and Mordred had been born when Kara was two, at the expense of Gisa's life. For this, Kara could easily resent him, but she does not. He has never stopped being grateful.

In early summer, when the heat is high and spirits low, a sickness comes. It sweeps the camp, leaves them coughing and sweating faster than they can drink, and Kara and Mordred are set to fetching and carrying water while Elan treats the sick. In the end, two die. Mordred is holding Emshir's hand when it goes still. Kara digs a grave in the woods and Elan helps Mordred carry the body in the fading light. They lay Emshir in reverently, and Kara sobs, twice, then screams. In the branches above, the birds screech and take flight, trees shaking under a wave of black wings rising as one, banished by the weight of Kara's grief. Mordred falls to his knees beside her in the soil, and says nothing.

They place stones above her grave. Marked.

Midsummer comes and goes, and with it wisps of grey cloud that gather and disperse endlessly in the sky. Kara borrows one of Elan's knives and Mordred goes with her into the trees. Together, they practice throwing the blade at a target. The cold metal, heavy between his spindly fingers, focuses his mind, and he keeps an eye on Kara as she measures her own distance, turns her stance sideways.

_You will not allow yourself to be vulnerable._

It wasn't a question, but she nods anyway. The knife rises, unsteady, from her open palm, and as she clenches her fingers into a fist, it flies true. She raises an eyebrow, and he smiles.

In late summer, the camp moves on, and Mordred accompanies Kara to the cairn for the last time. She grows a circle of delicate yellow flowers above the sun-weathered stones, and Mordred thinks of gold eyes and a red sky and the way it felt when the flame of Emshir's mind guttered and sparked out into its own smoke. He tries to pray, but cannot think of anything to be grateful for at all.

Autumn is harsh and unrelenting. Six camps burn, and they flee, dodging patrols and soldiers and making all haste for the eastern border, for the lands Camelot cannot claim. More than once, Mordred wakes in the night to red cloaks and red blood in Kara's dreams, and rouses her from uneasy sleep lest she cry out and alert their silent predators. In the dark, in a shared mess of tangled blankets, she allows herself to be held, shaking so hard he thinks it a wonder her skin still clings to her. Her words desert her at the second new moon, and he half-carries her the last few miles into neutral territory. Neither of them sleep well that night. He dreams of a sword in his hand, tacky blood holding his fingers to the hilt. He thinks of the end of all things. Kara notices - how could she not? She hears his thoughts as well as her own, and when he thinks of himself as hope killer, she catches him by the elbow, a desperate look on her face. "Mordred..."

"Do you remember the pool, at the camp last winter?" he asks, shakily. "The one that let Feoras see the future?"

"Yes." Her voice is steadfast. Her grip is tight. She will not let him go.

"I looked into it." The image of a red sky comes to his thoughts unbidden, and he does not stop it, and she does not let him go. He buries his face in her neck, where she cannot see his tears. I am sorry, Kara.

_I won't lose you. I won't let this happen._

For two months, there is never a day without smoke in the sky. Not all of the survivors they come across are Druids, Elan explains quietly, after her new patients have finally fallen asleep. A band of traders had been heading east towards Essetir when a roving Camelot patrol had come upon them, mistaken them for Druids, and cut them down.

They find a woman who dies of an infection, a sword wound in her leg festering like milk in the midday sun. Then, four children, three younger than Mordred and one older yet than even Kara. The youngest girl is a stripling of three, ashed-faced and silent. Her and her sister, Morgan, a girl of nine, go to live with Feoras and Falinor, two of the camp elders. The other two, twin boys of five, go to one of the trackers. Kara tries to befriend the boys over the following weeks. On her third attempt, she returns a few hours after she left, sullen-faced and silent. Mordred, for his part, tries to strike up a conversation with Morgan, and returns to their tent with his head down, a smudge of mud and a dark bruise contouring his cheek. His jaw aches.

By the time the first snow comes, Kara can hit a target with a flung blade at fifty paces, and Mordred manages forty easily enough. Elan departs from the camp for a day and returns with two blades, bought from the smith of a nearby town. Mordred's is too large for his hands, now, though just small enough he can hold it, but Kara's fits her a little better, and he knows that by the time they are full grown the weapons will be naught more than daggers to hide in a boot or a sleeve. A last resort. A sharp edge to draw when everything else is gone. The blades are cold iron, a single fuller stretching from cross to tip; the handle is simple leather, an unremarkable brown. Elan has honed the balance with magic, though, and demonstrates how each can rest on a single finger.

The nights of that winter, when the forests are dressed in ice and the group has begun to travel down the border, east of the ridge of Ascetir, Kara and Mordred practice tossing their blades back and forth in the air while Elan tells them quiet stories. With a strange look on her face, she speaks almost reverently of her days in Camelot. The warmth of a smithy. The hum of a stone-walled town. Her sister's smile. After a time, she moves on to more fantastical things. The last Dragon, locked under the castle - she warns them, then. Dragons are to be respected and feared, but not trusted. Their knowledge oft outstrips their wisdom: their pride leads them where they should not stray.

Then she tells them a different story.

"His name is Emrys, and he is Magic. The time will come when there will be a King, who will unite this land that is called Albion. Emrys will stand at the side of the Once and Future King, and magic will flow unfettered, coming down from the sky and the mountains in rivers to breathe life back into the world. But even as Albion prospers, the King's undoing will come forth, and he will die, and the Kingslayer will know no peace till it is done."

That night, Elan paces the edges of camp, some strange and lonely vigil neither Mordred nor Kara dare disturb. They are near a small village whose name Mordred cannot remember, and there is an odd ache in his bones. He distracts himself by weaving winter-flowers into Kara's hair, but when they move south towards Engerd, his heart burns, as though he is leaving something behind in the snows, something distant and inescapable and beautiful.

The name, though, stays in his mind for days afterwards. Emrys. The weight of it strikes Mordred like the first beam of sunlight in spring, like a mountain settling itself across his shoulders. Heavy and wonderful. The name of the universe.


	3. Origin

On the third day after they have finally paused in their travels, Kara wakes him early with a bony foot in his ribs as she wriggles out of bed, and he takes a moment to catch his breath while she pulls on her boots.

_Where are you going?_ he projects, still clumsy and sleep-heavy. Normally she is fastidious about when she wakes, and this is too early by hours.

_Firewood, sleepyhead, come on!_

He smiles despite himself, and pushes off the last blanket, shivering a little at the cold. He pulls on his jacket and mutters a quick fire-spell to warm himself against the air, the life of spring still shaking off winter's chill. Sneaking as quietly as they can, they depart the tent, leaving Elan sleeping. The work is second nature, scrabbling through the snow for wood and helping Kara stack suitable branches in an uneven bundle at the crook of her elbow. Neither of them notices the wolf till it is ten paces away.

Mordred freezes, instinctively. It pads forwards, huge and grey, and noses curiously at Kara's free hand. Very, very slowly, she uncurls her fingers to gingerly pet its snout. It whuffs out a breath of warm air, misting in the cold, then raises its head and begins to tongue at her exposed face. Mordred giggles a little, then quiets as it turns its attention to him- but it only butts its head gently into his chest, enough to make him stumble and catch himself on its neck without thinking, hands fisting in silver fur.

_What is your name?_ comes Kara's whisper, quiet and hesitant.

_Drút,_ comes the reply. _I am yours._

Mordred lets go of the fur around her neck, and she licks a gentle stripe across his face. A warmth settles somewhere inside him. _You are ours._

By the time they return to the camp, wood still clutched in Kara's arms, Elan is poking her head out of the flaps of the tent. At the sight of a great wolf accompanying her two children, a flash of panic crosses her face, but Mordred feels Kara's mind stretch out and soothe her, indistinct tangles of warmth brushing past him like a campfire at his back on a cold night. He knows that some of the others are concerned about them. Say that they are wrapped too closely together, that they cannot ever tell where the lines between them should be drawn to separate them into two forms. As though that could be a bad thing. Mordred loves Kara, and Kara loves Mordred. He knows, with a perfect kind of clarity, that he would lose some part of himself if ever he lost her. And Drút is a part of that, now.

Breakfast passes quickly. Drút seems content to lay on the floor with her head in Kara's lap: Mordred notes she seems soothed by the pressure, a part of her usually held tense unraveling into comfortable looseness. Elan adjusts remarkably quickly, to her credit, and when they go to stack the dishes for washing later, she comments, "I was wondering when you two would get familiars, but there's nothing you wouldn't share given the chance, is there?"

Mordred shakes his head resolutely. _What is not me, is her. What is not her, is me._

"Did you have a familiar, mama?" Kara asks, her voice quiet.

"Yes. Some time ago. A forest cat." Elan pauses, a faraway look on her face. "Arstafas. You would have loved him." Elan flicks a hand absent-mindedly, and beside Mordred, a pestle awakes in gold and starts grinding mint down into mush. "Forest fires are dangerous things." Shaking herself, she gives Drút a hesitant pat on the head. "You're going to be amazing. Both of you. Don't let them tell you different. You're going to be amazing."

_You really believe that?_

"Yes. I do."

Mordred's anniversary is marked by Elan pulling a leatherbound book from where is buried deep in a bag. All through the day he perches on Kara's lap so they can both see as Elan flips through pages, explaining the writing-runes as she goes. After that, Kara takes to reading quickly, racing through Elan's papers on medicine: she regales Mordred with her newest discoveries while he ducks and swerves in well-paced circles, practicing with his dagger until his hands ache with the effort. He learns to read some, though not as well as Kara, but finds no hidden thing in ink and paper, no love like the one Kara has discovered.

He is intrigued, though, by the writing of regular folk, and it takes only a little persuasion for Elan to teach him the letters used by those who are not Druids. He practices the letters with charcoal sticks on the flat stones by the river, until they move on in late spring, after Imbolc and Kara's tenth anniversary, and there are no good stones anymore. Their new camp is watered by a small trickle on a hillside, lined on one side by a bank more mud than grass and on the other by sharp reeds.

Kara, wiser by years and with a better mind for clever things, takes up studying medicine proper by Elan's side. Mordred, every her counterpart, the sharp body to a sharp mind, trains in practiced drills, until Drút yips at him and they break from daggerwork to go chasing rabbits. Kara's voice echoes to him as he goes. He will never match her in these things, he knows, but he learns nonetheless: how to clean a wound, treat an infection, help someone feverish find recovery. These are useful things. These will be useful things, he thinks, and his mind is on images of Pendragon-red cloaks, of swords, of blackened battlefields and a tug just under his ribcage.

The camp keeps moving, and by early summer, Drút has begun tucking herself into their bed at night. With Kara growing by handspans, and Mordred gaining height himself, there is barely room for all three of them, but without need for blankets or furs in the warmth, they make it work. At midsummer, they share roasted waterfowl and vegetables, and Kara prays with Mordred afterwards, huddled together by the fire under the just-darkening sky. It is nearly midnight.

In a fit of sudden melancholy, he reaches out to Drút.

_Will you be with us forever?_

_Unless you send me away, I will follow you into death itself._

_You do not live as long as us. You have fewer winters in this world._

_I am bound to each of you. So long as you want me, I will stay._

That night, Mordred lays himself across Drút's side in their shared bed, Kara's hand clasped in his own, her face tucked into his hair. He sleeps, and does not dream.


	4. Arrival

The change of seasons comes, and with it a wave of golden leaves. For six nights, Mordred and Kara join the camp in begging the Silver Goddess to give them a mild winter, to keep the snows gentle, let them keep the warmth of their skin. Elan joins them in prayer, then lectures them all the last evening about the different Gods - the spirits of the woods and the waters; the Triple Goddess, ever fickle and mercurial; the Gods of healing and life, of growth and renewal, and of fire eternal; the Goddess of Magic, whose name is still kept unknown. The Silver Goddess, though, dwells in the Cauldron of Arianrhod, and they must take pilgrimage to her when they reach their twenty-first summer, because she is the Goddess of peace, and of the Druids, and as much as they are hers, she is theirs.

They continue southwards past the hills west of Engerd, and dig an encampment to last the winter at the base of the foothills where the valley-shadow has kept the ground bare, at least for now. Mordred and Kara spend three days gathering wood, to keep the fires burning for the long snows ahead. Drút accompanies them, bringing pieces back in her jaws and depositing them carefully at Mordred's feet. On a trip up the north slope, she sniffs out the entrance to a rabbit warren, and Mordred plants a stick to mark it. Once they unload their spoils by the largest firepit, Kara fetches twine and Mordred heads to the stream to cut reeds.

Kara pokes him with a stick while he braids the string for a snare, and he sticks his tongue out, then reaches across the table and makes as though to poke her back with the blade of his knife. Elan scoffs, and lays a hand on his shoulder. "Don't play with knives when you don't know what you're doing, Mor, it's not safe."

"Will you teach me, then?" he asks, in a sudden burst of self-confidence. Kara glances sideways at him, fiddling with her own dagger distractedly. "Us?"

Elan gives him a measured look. "Why do you need to know this?"

Mordred pauses, and it is Kara who answers, her eyes fixed on the grain of the wood in front of her. "They attack so often. We need to defend ourselves." She hesitates, and Mordred waits patiently. "And Mordred will need to keep him safe, when he meets him."

"Who?"

_Emrys._

Elan raises an eyebrow at Mordred. "Why don't you say his name?"

Mordred thinks of golden eyes. Lightning from a dark sky. The sharp tug of a sword in his ribs. Kara flinches. "Would you name your destiny?"

Elan considers for a long moment, then lets out a breath that mists in the cool air of the tent, and starts a fire with a snap of her fingers. Mordred reaches aching-cold hands for the flame. "When spring comes, and Mor's anniversary is passed. I will teach you then." She dumps another log onto the fire. "Don't seek glory, by sword or spell or pen. It is not worth having."

Mordred nods, and curls his fire-warmed hands into fists.

Elan leaves three days later, to collect supplies. Mordred wraps himself in all the layer he owns and clambers awkwardly onto Drút's back. He is small for his age, still, so she has little trouble carrying him through the woods surrounding the camp. Kara accompanies them on foot, and they go in silence, listening to the crunch of Kara's bots and the huff of breath in cold air, disguised in part by scarves pulled across their faces. Soon, they will have to turn back, but for now, they can wander in the valley, open and lonesome and totally free.

A week later, Elan returns with a stack of bowls and a rough cloth bundle which she sets aside and forbids them to inspect. Mordred busies himself instead with practicing fire-spells while Kara reads through Elan's books and occasionally lets licks of flame curl about her fingers. On midwinter, she is permitted to start the festal fire, and the pride of her success warms Mordred more than the flames. She stays by it a while, after. Mordred departs with Drút to the wide, flat rock by an outcropping where no snow ever lays, and gazes up at the stars.

_Tell me about Camelot,_ he says, and his mind is on last night's dream. He had fallen asleep with his hands tangled in Kara's, and dreamt of a white city surrounded by forest, images recalled from years ago. Glossy and indistinct. Long halls, glass windows, and his destiny, within, glowing like the sun. Himself, in the full and radiant colour of moonlight, dressed in armour and bearing the crest of Camelot upon his red cloak. A Knight. Glorious. Shining. Unfettered, and yet bound.

Of course it will be his future. How could it not be? The things he saw in the looking-pool swarm in his mind like curious fish, and he has come to understand, a little. He will serve the King without question, be a sword at his side, protect him unto the end of the world. And he will bring the end, destruction ever following at his heels. Still, though, he savours what will come before - corridors to pace, and stained glass windows looking out onto a courtyard of warm stone, and torches in barracks filled with men he does not recognise but knows nonetheless. A sword in his hand, natural as breathing, instinctive as magic. The force of destiny upon his shoulders.

_Camelot,_ Drút says, _is beautiful._

_Tell me. Tell me everything._

He has always loved sunrise in winter. The golden light filters through the intermittent trees, and below them is broken and splayed a thousand times by the frost glitter that decorates the world, till it seems that the earth glows with all the light of summer held inside.

_The sun rises above the citadel in the morning, and the city glows. The walls are so golden you would never believe they had known night, and the sky is warm with light. The noise swells like a spring river as they wake, and all at once the stone seems to come alive with its people._

The following day, it is too cold even to wander the edge of camp, and Elan helps Mordred make bread. Kara is weaving in the corner, her thoughts restless, and Mordred finds a comfort in the simplicity of his task. It bakes on a flat stone by the fire and Mordred sits and watches the flames.

_We can smell the scent of it in miles for every direction. Cooked meat, after a hunt, roasted over an open fire. In the colder months, spices and citrus in the wine they drink on the battlements to keep themselves warm. Always the smell of animals they keep, horses and pigs and chickens, and the smell of people, of course. And baking, always. Fresh bread every morning. Woodsmoke - most of all, Camelot smells of a fire. Not a blaze, but a hearth. Tamed and warm._

The days drag on, leaving quiet tracks in the snow, unremarkable. They have chosen to shroud themselves in silence when winter steals their ability to flee. The tents flutter in the wind. Fires crackle, and cooking pots clatter quietly, their discordance swallowed up by the snow and the trees, blankets of green and white. He cannot stand the silence. He cannot stand still for much longer. He cannot stand to be still for much longer.

_It is never silent there. Even at night, from the woods, we hear metal on stone, the guards at the gates, the patrols along the boundaries. The fire-crackle, too, goes on through the dark hours: it is a wonder they have not burned the whole forest down. Just before dawn, the first few who are not metal men come awake. They stoke the hearths that have dwindled, sweep the streets, prepare the city for the day ahead. Then come the people who cook and clean and sew the land, farmers departing for the lands outwith the walls, carts rattling in their wake. Horse hooves - always and always the clatter of horse hooves, knights on their patrols or just folk hauling goods. By noon there is so much noise I doubt they can hear anything at all. On a clear day, the clang of metal on metal in the castle will echo for miles. It's always so vibrant. So alive._

_Do you think I would do well there, sweet Drút?_ he had asked, heart in his throat.

_Oh, Mordred. You will be amazing there._

Spring comes slowly, sleepily, shaking off the winter, and with it, Mordred's eighth anniversary. Elan pulls down the package that has sat in the alcove since she returned from her trip, and by the fireside, Mordred and Kara wait with bated breath. She unwraps the linens with all the tenderness of a mother swaddling her newborn.

Inside is a pair of swords.

They are not identical, though they appear that way at first. But one is all elegant curves, the crossguard woven into the gentle curve of long grass, its handle a delicate concave: a beautiful thing. The other is stark and solid, utterly unyielding, sharp angles no less lovely. Without thinking, Mordred reaches for the delicate-twined sword, its teardrop pommel and sweeping curves. He exchanges a smile with Kara as she lifts the weapon that is all lines and edges. Then, he lifts his own to inspect it.

It is near half his height in its length, and though he knows it is made for one hand, he can wrap both around the leatherbound hilt. The scabbard is decorated with subtle black weave embroidered in stiff thread. He draws it slowly, reverently, and feels the balance sweep into itself, as perfect as the first drop of rain in a storm. Experimentally, he weaves it and dips, moving in slow motions, arcs around, careful not to nick anything. The way it moves through the air is like the other half of a dance. He had not even known till now that he was dancing alone.

Beside him, Kara frowns. In the corner, laying with her head on her paws, Drút huffs out a whine. He raises his sword before him, and Kara stiffens her shoulders as she does the same. The blade glimmers in the firelight as it taps against his own. Death, Mordred thinks suddenly, is a silver thing.

Elan is a good teacher, and Mordred a quick learner. The blade of his sword is dulled, slightly - still sharp enough to cut, but not enough to cause serious damage should he accidentally catch himself or Elan. They begin drilling side-by-side, moving slowly as Kara and Mordred adjust to the weight. Kara moves confidently, without difficulty, but the metal weighs Mordred down, strains his muscles and makes him slow.

When he has tired and Kara grows distracted, Elan bids Mordred practice footwork with her while Kara returns to their tent to read. He moves side to side, to and fro, moving in and out of range slowly at first, then faster. Elan brings her own sword to bear against him, carefully sheathed. When he is not swift enough, the would-be edge pauses bare inches from his skin. Not once does she strike him.

On Kara's tenth anniversary, she braids flowers into his hair and clothes, wraps careful weaves of green round his wrists and ankles. Mordred's mind is on the day's practice, when the edges of his vision shaded in with a green field ringed around by stone walls, and he felt upon his shoulders the weight of silver armour and a red cloak.

"I think I am going to be a Knight," he confesses, picking at his bread by the fire. Kara takes his hand.

"Then I am sure you will be the best of them all."

By the time summer begins to come into its own, they have packed up and moved on again, heading northwest by the forest of Ascetir. One of the scouts finds a system of caves at the southern foot of a mountain, on the westernmost edge of the range. A thick wall of trees surrounds it in all directions; the opening itself is hidden under a false outcropping that makes it appear no more than a cliff. The valley is not well-trodden. Travelling the mountains is fraught with danger, and a last resort for most, since few are eager to risk avalanches and rockslides, sheer canyons and unstable ground. Within the caves, though, there is a wellspring providing clean water in plenty, and beside the small stream, enough space for all of them with room to spare. Kara helps Elan choose a spot and Mordred sets up their tent against a rock wall where they can carve in shelves and surfaces. He smoothes the floor hastily with magic, cutting the stone with weak slices of silver. Kara neatens his edges, cleans up the corners, levels the surfaces, takes care of all his quiet imperfections.

During the days that follow, Elan has them both drill again, in the dust-gold daylight at the mouth of the cave. Beside him, he feels Kara's mind wander, to flowers and roots and growing things coming to life, and knows her heart is not in battle. It is, he thinks, a good thing. She should not treasure war more dearly than life. Neither of them should. During the day, he accompanies her herb-cutting, and dutifully helps her bake them dry in the sun. She has the hands of a healer, and it is something he would do well to learn.

On the eve of midsummer, Kara retires early, and Elan stays in the tent, but Mordred diverts his walk to creep to a small rock raised above the main fire, and listens to the whispers, concealed by flickering darkness. They call him Kingslayer, say the word _fighter_ like a dirty thing, like taking up arms to defend his sister could ever be anything but right, like you can believe in anything if you don't fight for it, one way or another, in the end.

When he returns to their tent, Elan asks him a question. It takes him a moment to clear his voice. When he does, he asks how she learned to fight, and she tells him.

That night, he dreams of patrol, sweeping the corridors with a torch in one hand and a friend at his back. Of gold eyes - always, always of destiny. Of a room with a single window and a single bed, a cupboard and an end table, loose floorboards and detritus. The scent of paper and old books, vials and medicines, fire-smoke and fresh meals. He dreams of a city. Of a courtyard, and also of cells. Of a druid girl, a bare five years, caught and to be burned. Of a guard who dared to let her escape, and followed her to freedom.

"I thought Camelot guards were all men?" he asks, the next day, as he's combing back his hair.

Elan smiles her sad, wry smile. "It seems that in that, as in so many things, they were mistaken with me."

He considers. "Why did you become a soldier?"

"My father was a blacksmith, so I knew weapons already. And I had my sister to protect."

He thinks of a girl, trapped in a cell, hands wrapped around metal bars. Imagines Kara in the same cell. Imagines himself a Knight, his hands gently over hers. "What was her name? The girl you freed?"

"You know, the worst part," Elan muses, indescribably quiet. "I don't even remember anymore."

In autumn, a band of raiders set up camp just outside the entrance to the caves, and Kara will not leave the tent. Several of the best casters stay in the narrow tunnel night and day, maintaining a concealing glamour to cover the gap in the rock. Mordred spends his time stroking gentle fingers through Kara's hair to tease out tangles while Drút lays by her side. The disruption has shaken her, greatly, and she keeps mostly to their shared bed, swaddling herself in blankets to keep the world out.

It rains heavily twelve days later, and that is apparently all the prompting the group needs to move on. Drút follows them for hours until Mordred is sure they are not turning back. Then, he packs some food, dashes for the forest outside, and scrambles up a tree to watch the dawn. Slowly, the sun crests the horizon above a sea of bronze leaves, gold on gold. In the distance, a flock of birds rise as one on silver wings. Mordred watches them until they turn and wheel towards the mountainside and he loses track, white disappearing amongst grey.

_Elan,_ he calls, _Drút and I are going running today. Tell Kara I'll be home for dinner._

_Have fun._

Scampering back down the tree is even easier than getting up. In the time that he spent watching the sunrise, Drút has returned, and is waiting for him at the base.

_Where are we going?_

_Skywards._

The hillside slope is gentle enough at first. Mordred had wrapped himself in many layers before he left the tent, to keep out the last of the night's chill, so he stays warm even as height saps the heat from the air. After several hours of walking, and a short stop for them both to drink from a silver stream trickling down a narrow gulch, they pass out of the treeline and onto the flat mountainside. It is quiet. Across stretches of patchy grass and barren rock, Mordred can see snippets of blue sky, nestled stubbornly among the mountains.

By noon, they round onto the west slopes, and Mordred's breath catches in his throat. Before him is the ground, unfurling in unforgiving grey. There is no treeline on this side of the slope, just a jagged clash of green and silver where dull rock gives way to hardy grass. Beyond that, though, a forest stretches forever. In the distance, a small hill, upon which sits a white speck, glittering in the noonday sun. When he squints, Mordred can make out turrets, halls, fortifications: about the citadel, houses huddle like kits around their mother. He lets out a shaky breath, and sits down on a small outcropping, legs dangling about a drop. Drút settles beside him.

_How long until we go home?_

He gives her a sad smile. _There is an ocean of trees between us and home._

He does not try to track the time he spends there, mapping the towers and halls in his mind's eye, trying to match what he can see to indistinct blurs of memory from days or years ago. A stairwell; a great room with a long table and high-backed chairs; a healer's chamber, and with it a small room, filled with light and fate; a stable with horses more grandly decorated than any he has seen; a small sleeping-room near an armoury, surrounded by a dozen other just like it - but this one, he is certain, belongs to him.

Mordred sits on the mountainside, under the autumn sun, and watches his future.

That night, he and Elan practice for hours, till the sun is fully gone and all the sunset faded from the sky. Their only illumination is the flickering fire, painting them in orange and gold, and Mordred feels light. His movements are swift, like a newborn river in spring, like lightning from a clear sky. Sharp and bright and unstoppable. After drills, they spar, and he swings, parries, thrusts, pulling his blows but pressing his advantage. On their third round he locks a parry, steps in, and sweeps Elan's feet from under her. She lands on her back and he has his blade at her head before he even realises it. He is panting with exertion, skin soaked in sweat and tight curls sticking to his forehead, but he has won.

That night, he recalls a training field, a blonde man in Pendragon red. Thrust, swing, parry. A pause, and he backs off slightly as the man does too. Then, a cut, a thrust, the man dodges to the side, and Mordred kicks the back of his knee, sweeps his free hand across the back of his neck, sends him to the ground and gets his sword at his throat. The men who ring around them cheer, and the man he beat grabs him around the waist and lifts him into the air. He laughs without thinking, a smile on his face as he glances around at his friends.

Over the next few weeks, Elan spends every day with Kara, and Mordred wanders alone, venturing into the woods in the valley to cut and store herbs and wild grains for winter. Kara's quiet whispers accompany him all day, murmuring conversation from the caves, where she keeps the fire burning all day to smoke and dry their spoils. Mordred can feel the new season approaching. There is a chill in the air, and most days now the sun cannot be seen for all the clouds in the sky. 

"There's a storm coming, isn't there?" he asks, one evening, as he carries in firewood.

Elan exhales. "I think so."

The preparations for winter always unite them all: many are likewise out finding food and supplies. In the foot of the mountains, the snows will be heavy, and they will not want to leave the caves. The last of the scouts return from a small village to the east with a few last-minute supplies - cloth and thread and cookware - just as the forest finishes shedding its leaves.

Two days later, the storm arrives.

It buries the ground as deep as Mordred's head in snow. The cold bites into the rock and settles in their bones. Even the fires seem subdued. Within the first week, one of the children falls ill - the younger of the two sisters, Jin, a thin girl of five. Kara and Elan take it in turns to sit with her, trying to keep her warm even as her body closes up, her blood freezes, her stomach rebels against her. Mordred spends most of his time making soup and cleaning away the remains. Feoras, the girl's mother, visits the tent often, desperate to see improvement. Every time she leaves in tears.

When Mordred hears Feoras coughing so hard it shakes her a week after Jin had first become ill, he knows with a terrible kind of clarity that everything is about to get so much worse.

Within days, Feoras and her husband are both vomiting. Their eleven-year-old goes to stay with a tracker, and Mordred keeps a close eye on her, but she has always been haler than her elderly parents and her twig of a sister, and seems well.

Then, Feoras's friend Kira, who has been visiting their tent to help, retches and collapses near the cave entrance, hitting her head on a rock as she goes down. Mordred hears the cry, but by the time he has dropped his bowl and dashed to the mouth of the cave, her mind has gone silent and the river is painted over in red.

He drops to his knees and _screams_.

And then there is nothing.

When he wakes, Elan tells him that he opened his mind and poured it outwards. That every flame in the camp choked in sudden silver and extinguished itself. That they each, to a person, buckled at the knees, brought low by the agony of his grief. He has been unconscious for three days, midwinter been and gone while he slept. She says it without reproach, but beside him, there are dark circles under Kara's eyes, and her hug is a bitter thing.

_Don't you dare leave me. Don't you **dare**._

The next day, he leaves the tent. Six bodies lie there, unmarked linen covering up their faces. He walks on unsteady feet to the small alcove near the mouth of the cave, where the floor is oddly soil instead of stone, being as it is a false outcropping, stone wrapping over the living world in a tender embrace. They had considered putting a small tent or a fire here, since the almost-room is of a good size, and out of the way of any breeze that would blow down the length of the cavern. In the end, though, it had been decided they could risk neither light nor noise.

The dead, however, do not speak.

He digs with magic and grit and grief swallowed in his chest. The pits are deep, and the dirt that revealed them is set to one side. He carries the bodies alone, and lays them in with cold hands. Once that is done, he fetches his dagger and carefully carves headsigns into wood. Names, only. Kira. Ellsar. Jin, the child who shivered her own heart still. Feoras and Falinor, buried side by side. Lyra, the tracker-scout who had been keeping the fires burning, of late. She hadn't visited their tent, merely gotten unlucky, and Mordred cannot remember her face.

He binds the wood with enchantment to preserve it, and inters his hopes along with them. Bodies below the stones. Names above.


	5. Acquaintance

On a night near the end of winter, he dreams of another's mind: bright and brilliant, clear like an open sky, filled with light so exquisite he knows he will never love anything else so well. When he wakes, Kara shifts and murmurs in her sleep and snuggles closer to him. He delicately moves a stray strand of hair off her face, heart heavy with the knowledge that he will leave her.

Breakfast is a shared bowl of porridge, and a cup of watered-down ale each, warmed in the embers of last night's fire. The morning is warmer, spring finally approaching, and Kara accompanies him towards the cave mouth. Outside, the ground is still liberally blanketed in white, but green shoots are poking through. Footsteps crunch in the frosted grass as she dashes out and he follows. Above, it is mostly silver-grey with cloud, errant slivers of blue peeking nervously down into the world. Kara laughs, and Mordred joins her, twirling in place and throwing their arms out to revel in the life around them. After a moment, Kara stops, and grabs him by the waist, hoisting him up so he can get just a little closer to the sky.

They venture out each day as white gives way to green, and on his ninth anniversary, he spies a small clump of sticklewort at the base of a young sapling. He bends to cut it, and the familiarity of the motion fills a hole the winter had carved in him. The camp grows into spring quickly, filling back up the space of the valley. Kara loves the warmth, and the the brightness, and the birdsong in the trees: Mordred relishes in the endless space of the forest, of being able to run till his lungs burn and his legs shake with effort. He, Drút and Kara spend hours trekking through the valley, taking in the sounds of life, practicing throwing knives when they come across any mound of soil or moss that will take a blade without complaint. Sometimes, they go hunting, Drút instructing them carefully in quiet movement as they track rabbits and the occasional deer. Kara is quick and silent and effective, and Mordred shadows her without thinking, letting her movements be his own, as they always are.

Knives, however, only have so much range. With the warmer weather returning, the hunter-trackers of the group likewise depart from the caves, and come back after a week's hunt with much-needed replenishment for the camp's meat supply. Mordred, on Kara's behalf, begs a lesson on archery from one of the hunters, a young woman called Elyir. She is bemused by the request, but willing to show them how to hold the bow and land arrows in the target-carved wood of a dead tree that is kept for this purpose alone. Mordred hears Kara thinking on it, often, this dead thing that ought to be rotten, but is held when it should not stay, for imagined violence alone.

Two days later, when he is sure Kara is busy and will not notice his absence, he finds Elan and explains to her, and she agrees, departing east the next dawn and returning three days hence with a bundle under her arm. Two large bows, each as tall as Mordred himself, and a simple quiver and twenty arrows apiece. They are undecorated things, elegant and simple. Before Kara returns from berry-picking, he takes them to Elyir's tent, where she helps him lay in enchantments to strengthen the wood, keep it flexible and true. After, she cuts runes into them with her hunting knife, and Mordred feels the swirl of power and magic she pushes into each word. He traces them with his fingers, feeling the angled shapes of his people's writing. Speed. Silence. Accuracy. Mercy.

When he presents the bows to Kara, she grabs him in a reckless embrace, scooping him off his feet, then has to let go so she can spend a few minutes jumping and waving her hands about, and Mordred can't help but join in, feeling the delight radiating from her. Once they're done, she picks hers up, admiring the smooth curve, and Mordred does the same. They go to the target-tree, and when they begin to loose arrows, he feels a hum under his left hand where he can feel the scratched-in marks, and knows it cannot be explained by the snap of the string alone.

Kara takes to archery more naturally than swordplay: they practice their shooting all spring, while it warms into summer. Mordred varies his time between weapons and chores. While Kara helps Elan make poultices and tonics, he cooks and bakes and fetches supplies from the camp stockpiles. Finally, he begins to grow a little, gaining inches with the change of seasons. The first time he finds he can set his sword at his waist without it dragging on the ground, Kara smiles, and ruffles his hair. She's still taller, of course. The change is comforting, though: he feels somehow more himself this way, with a sword at his hip, a dagger tucked into the side of his quiver, a bow waiting unstrung just by his bed. He has weapons in his hands and his sister at his side, magic at his call and memories in his chest.

Most nights, now, he dreams of small houses, whitewashed stone and thatched roofs. Pigpens and a small stable, and beyond, wheat-fields fed by a river that trickles by and never gets high enough to flood. A boy passes down the lanes, whistling as he goes, and Mordred feels a desperate kind of longing, a nameless nostalgia for this place he has never known.

When the sun begins to peak high in the sky each day, one of the gardeners drops by with a bundle of saplings, and asks Elan if she can recruit them for planting season. They pass a week nestling the newborn trees into small nooks in the forest. The work is not unpleasant, and Mordred takes a little pride when he finds good ground nestled among scatters of rocks, but the process is dull, and to entertain himself he taps his feet in regular rhythms, hums a made-up tune as he goes. After a while, Kara joins in. Her voice is lower than his, somehow sadder, but with more spirit. More soul.

The last night of planting, he falls asleep to a warm room with a newly-stoked fire, drifting somewhere between unreality and memory. A window looks over a white courtyard, in the centre of which is a lone tree, blooming quietly under the stars. Moonlight reflects in through the glass. Below his bare feet, it paints the wooden floor in cool blue. He walks silently to the bed. A figure lies there already, tucked under the covers. Mordred can only catch glimpses - a slender-boned hand, a stretch of white-skinned shoulder, a mop of dark hair.

He sits on the edge of the bed. Behind him, he hears the shift of blankets as his silent companion sits up; then, a comforting hand on his shoulder. He dare not turn around. Instead, he casts his eyes around this place, its stone walls and mirror silvered over by moonlight. So unlike what he has ever known.

_Emrys. Please. Help me. I don't understand._

A gentle whisper of breath on the back of his neck. The fingers on his shoulder give a squeeze. Comforting.

_You will. Give it time._

He wakes to midsummer, feeling strange and heady and wonderful under the long light. The next week finds him and Kara up and down the length of a bank of bushes not far from the caves, searching out thyme and rosemary. Mordred notes that the earliest brambles have started to come in, though they are not yet ripe. They return two weeks later, and by the end of the afternoon, Kara's hands are sticky with juice, eating as they peruse the thorns for blackberries. Mordred moves with a newfound grace, a novel confidence in his steps.

Kara comments on it one morning, when the chill of approaching winter sends Elan to fetch more blankets. _You are different now._

There is no sense to denying it. "Yes."

"Why?"

Mordred pauses. Briefly, but long enough for her to notice. "I had a dream. About Emrys." Her intake of breath is sharp. "I know what I'm meant to do, Kara. This is a good thing. I know where I'm meant to be."

She sits, cross-legged, on their bed. "I thought this was where you were meant to be." Kara lets out a slow sigh, and they don't speak of it again.

The gentle cool of fall ends far too soon, and the true cold of winter settles in. Mordred spends the last warm day training with neglected weapons, until he sees Kara practicing her archery. Destiny, he thinks angrily, will not take his sister from him. He takes up his own bow and joins her, and if it's not the same as before, it is at least something. After, when they have tired, she passes him her waterskin and starts working again on a thing she has been whittling. Mordred tips his head back, relishes the air, and breathes in so deeply it feels as though he has inhaled the clouds.

By the time the first frost sets in, Mordred has repaired all their blankets and Kara is done with her work. She hangs the small carving of a loaded and drawn bow above their bed. Though it makes no sense, Mordred swears it feels warm under his fingers when he touches it.

Through the darker days, the sky throws a cloak of clouds around its shoulders and wraps itself in dimness. Mordred spends his days at the mouth of the caves, twisting twine into snare-string and observing the way the evergreens look when they are bitten with frost. Drút goes into the white and comes back with rabbits and small birds. The snows are gentle, this year, and though he sits in air without fire-warmth Mordred does not grow cold. On the evening of midwinter, Drút settles into the floor of their tent with a contented whuff of breath, and Elan strokes her absent-mindedly as she stirs the soup. Kara piles blankets onto the floor and curls into Drút's side, and Mordred joins her. The fire, flickering in occasional silver light under Mordred's idle ministrations, forms a flower, a dragon, a wreath of berries and leaves. Smoke drifts towards the roof of the cave. Then out, into the night.

On the last night of winter, Mordred dreams of holding his hands to the sky, reaching for a distant brilliant light, and his thoughts are on a dark-haired boy in a silver room. Black hair and white skin and gold eyes. The wellspring of magic. He speaks, and the reply, when it comes, is so quiet.

_Emrys. You are mine._

_Fate. You are your own._


	6. Disenchantment

Spring comes in a slow thaw. It is Imbolc, and Kara's anniversary, before the air has warmed enough to think of leaving the caves, and even then, the sun still struggles into the sky, shadowed by the edge of mountains and cloaked by a roof of leaves. The noise of the night's celebrations bothers Kara. Mordred accompanies her to the clearing by the stream, where they stay until it is well past moonrise and Elan comes to fetch them back. Mordred sleeps well that night.

He wakes to Elan's reassuring tones and Kara's voice in worried pitches. "Are you sure you're not angry?"

"I'm sure, sweetheart. I'm not angry."

"But we stayed out, _alone_."

"Yes. And you came back safe. I know you want the best for him, and so do I, but you are each unharmed and that's all that matters, alright?" A long pause. "Besides. It does you both good to learn about the world."

"What do you mean?"

Elan sighs, the sound tinged with soft regret. "You know - I've told you before - I don't care about the prophecy. I don't care about what he might do. He is my son. But he cares about the world. You both do, it's obvious. I want to protect you - I'm a mother, and you're my children, it's the most natural thing in the world, but I can't protect you by keeping you where I can see you forever. I'd rather you try to find the world, so you can protect _yourselves_."

"But..." Kara's voice quivers. "But you'll protect us, right?"

"I'll try. For as long as I can. But Mordred is fated, whether I like it or not, and I know you'll always follow where he leads, if he wants you to. Maybe you'll find Emrys. Maybe he'll become a Knight. We can't know. But I cannot put you in gilded cages. You don't belong there."

A long, long silence. Long enough that Mordred risks cracking open an eye to peek at the scene. Kara and Elan are on the other side of the fire, Kara basket-legged and Elan kneeling. Kara looks cold, curled into herself, and Mordred aches to reach out and touch her. But she is too far away, and he is fated, and he is the King-killer, and he can only protect himself. Kara deserves better.

When he wakes again, it's to an empty tent and a fire burning low. Instead of building it up, he bundles into more layers, then sets his sword at his hip and steps out into the small plateau of rock just beyond the cave mouth. He draws his weapon, and practices taking down an imaginary foe. Does not stop till his hands cramp and his arms ache with the effort. Then, he sheathes it, takes out his dagger, and goes into the woods.

Elan returns, alone, and finds the tent overrun with sunflowers and daffodils, exploding yellow in every corner, held up with fine ribbons of silver magic. In the centre, Mordred, staring at the fire, his hands bleeding black smoke into the flames.

"I want things to change," he confesses, as she sits beside him. "But I am afraid."

She lays a hand across his own. Brown fingers over brown. "The bravest people are always afraid of change, wolfchild. It is what you do with the fear that matters."

"What do you do with it?" he asks, face turned towards her. Grey smoke twines around his palms, lacing its fingers through his own.

"I'm not sure yet," she admits.

"But you're the bravest person in the world!"

She chuckles at that. "No. I'm not."

Mordred frowns. "But you can do _everything_."

She smiles, and casts her eyes upwards. "Maybe, you just have to hold the fear inside. Let yourself feel it. Let it go through you. But you control it, not the other way around. You are a person, Mordred. It cannot tell you what to do."

He takes a deep breath, then huffs it out, eyes still fixed on the flames. "I am a person. It cannot tell me what to do."

_Kingslayer_ , a voice in his head whispers, and it sounds like Kara.

The fire goes out.

Over the next week, he haunts the forest like a ghost, burying arrows into the target-tree till dead layers of bark peel back, a scab revealing a weeping wound. Kara sleeps in their bed, still, so he lays blankets across the floor, on the other side of the fire, where he can lay facing the entrance. Guilt curls heavy and deep in his chest when he sees her face. Nine days later, Elan comes to fetch him from a clearing near the cave entrance. When she calls out his name, he bursts into tears and abruptly sinks into the river. In the minute it takes her to reach him and pull him out, he has chilled, and is shivering frantically.

He cries out, a wordless scream, and the weight of it shakes the trees, crows taking flight in a cacophony of fear. Elan wraps her arms around him and rocks him back and forth, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

He catches a chill, from, the cold water, and spends the next few days in Elan's bed, sweating out a mild fever. She tends him with patience, while he tosses and turns and cannot tell waking times from sickness-dream from remembered fate. Drút at the foot of his bed, a white city under a radiant sunrise, a sword in his hand, a sword in his chest, a hand in his own, red cloaks swarming a green camp, red skies swarming a green forest, night patrol, moonlight on glass.

He shudders, and drifts into merciful black.

By the time his fever has broken, Kara has left. Out on a hunt with two others, Elan informs him, to be back in four days. His muscles feel weak from stillness and shaking. There is a snowdrop by the bed, so small he could close his hand over it. Drút lets him lean on her as he gets out of bed, and they move together out the tent. After the warmth of bed, the air is cold and unwelcoming.

The sky outside is blue, an unremarkable mid-morning scattered with clouds. Chalk dust in still water. No red. No moon. No stars in sight.

Summer arrives quietly, without any fanfare, just the lengthening of the days and Kara's frosty return. The first day, she will not even speak to him. Though he is not sick anymore, a chill has settled in his bones. They do not celebrate midsummer. Mordred tries to apologise to Kara, to explain, but frustration catch the words in his throat, and though he speaks some, he does not manage to say anything at all.

After two weeks of brittle silence, Elan asks him what he is doing.

"I am fated," he says. "And she- she deserves-"

"Kara loves you, wolfchild."

He does not respond.

She kneels in front of him, moving slowly, as though he is a wild deer who will startle if she surprises him. He tucks his head into her arms and cries, quietly.

_I don't understand why it's like this._

_Me neither, wolfchild. Me neither._

He dreams of the city that night, and it does not hurt. He does not want to stay here, and the city with its high walls beckons like a lone star, and he cannot keep Kara safe forever. He paces dark corridors, feeling the silver gleam of moonlight on stone and skin. When the sun breaks across courtyards and walls, he watches the sky paint itself dawn-gold with a smile tugging at his face.

The leaves turn auburn and bronze, and Mordred is glad for the change. Summer's sticky heat swaps itself out for a soothing chill, and he spends a few days scampering along rows of bushes, seeking out berries for the evenings. Kara begins to speak to him again, but it is shorter new, more polite. Her mind is closed, and he cannot feel the warmth of her thoughts when she draws near, but he refuses to feel guilty for what he cannot change, this itch in his bones that asks for more. They exchange quiet, insignificant conversation over dinner, and Elan asks the camp carpenter to build Mordred a box-bed frame, claiming he and Kara are too old now to share anymore. In a way, it's even true.

The snows arrive quickly, but they are light to begin with, falling overnight and melting by mid-afternoon. Kara spends her days fetching herbs and getting meat to store for winter, along with other gatherers. Mordred hauls firewood and bakes herb-bread, and notices Elan spending time in the tent, working with a knife and wood at their small table.

"Charms," she explains, when Mordred enquires. "The runes contain magic, to keep away sickness, to hold in the warmth, to nurture good will."

"Do they work?"

Elan makes a considering noise. "If they're made right. Sometimes, people try, and it ends up as nothing but empty words. But I think you would do well at them, if you wanted to. It's difficult to make charms that make people happy, though. You can't ever really make someone do something they don't want to, not without hurting them."

When he's done kneading his bread and set it to rest and rise, he sits on the stool beside Elan and picks up one of her small rectangles of wood. Uncarved. It has a small hole in one corner, where a strip of leather can be threaded through. Running his fingers across the delicate strips of burnished leather, he measures the longest with his eyes. Long enough.

_Keep your wearer hidden_ , he thinks, as he begins etching in delicate runes, feeling the familiar flicker of magic in his fingertips. _Keep them unnoticed, even when they are seen. Hide them from ill-will, from ill-intent. Make others' eyes pass over them. Keep them safe. Make them seem unremarkable. Keep them out of sight._

When he finishes, half an hour later, stark runes spell out invisible in clean lines. He pulls it over his head, and tucks it under the scarf he has taken to wearing, of late. Hidden. Unseen. When Kara returns that evening, her eyes slide over him without comment, and her expression does not sour the way it has, of late. It's not _good_ , but it is enough. It has to be.

As the days shorten and the grass stiffens with frost, he twists the pendant between his fingers as he goes about his day. _Be invisible. Be silent and unnoticed and safe._ In the evenings, he works at it still and thinks of vanishing like smoke in a gusty sky, like mist in the morning. The crackling cold brings him cold as it settles in, as midwinter draws near. He has felt more calm, of late, since he found ways to disappear. Sometimes, the weight of destiny still settles under his ribs and threatens to steal his breath. The heaviness of the cave wears at him, and he has not seen the sky since the first snows came. Mostly, though, he can breath in crisp winter air and taste the sticky pine tang of the forest in the valley, and know he will be free.

The first night that the snow lays on the ground all day and does not melt, Mordred dreams of a corridor, empty but for a boy with dark hair and pale skin and all the light in the world tucked inside his eyes. Mordred himself is taller, older, stronger, his black curls untamed and threatening to fall in his face. Emrys steps towards him and takes his hand, presses their palms together. It's a good dream.

On the morning of midwinter, he wakes long before first light. It is still pitch black in the tent, and he can hear Kara and Elan's soft, even breathing. Slowly, using magic to muffle his noise, he slips out of bed and pulls on his boots and cloak. The stone is cold underfoot as he slips out of the tent. As he goes, he winds his scarf around his head, covering all his skin but a gap for his eyes. The chill of fresh air bites at the bridge of his nose, and he smiles as he goes. Wary of tripping in the dark and falling, he summons a mote of silver light to one gloved hand, and makes his hand carefully towards the large clearing to the east.

The sun comes up slowly as he continues onward through the forest, light trickling faintly through the thin leaf cover above him. Normally, the trip is swift, but the dark of the early hour and the sleep-stiffness of his muscles slow him, and he makes no effort to hurry, so it is a full hour before he finally breaks through the line of trees into open ground. Above, a watery yellow sun crawls above the line of the eastern mountains, shedding light into the cloud-streaked sky. He scrambles up a grand tree with broad, smooth branches, and stares up in unabridged wonder. Time has blurred his memories of the sight, after long months in the semidark of the cave. Above the canopy, he is attended by flitting swarms of small insects in the warm sun. The soft yellow of dawn takes his breath away.

He remains there, in the clearing, until the sun has fully cleared the jagged line of the horizon, and he knows the camp will be awake. Then, he rises on stiff legs, circles the clearing three times to get his blood flowing, and begins to make his way home.

That night, he dreams of the city. The chatter of a market square accompanies the scent of fresh bread from the stalls; nearby, he can smell the meat-salt smell of a butcher. He moves up the streets past rattling cart-wheels and the tap-tap of ironshod hooves on the cobbles. At the citadel itself, he finds himself in a grand hall, flanked by waves of Knights in Camelot red, kneeling before a King and beside him, a seated Queen who looks so much like his mother. When he departs the room, the double doors lead into a forest grove in dappled green and gold.

Drút noses him awake on the morning of his anniversary, and jokingly tugs his blanket off when he snuffles and tries to roll back over and fall asleep again. Eventually, at her prodding, he gets up. It is damp outside, snowmelt lending moisture to the air and speed to the cave stream. The rains have come earlier than usual, and the valley drinks in the downpour with reckless abandon, the last of winter's tears washing away with the grime. It is cold, still - early rains have not brought with them early warmth - but Mordred takes the opportunity to scrub himself downstream, relishing the feel of cool, clean water against his skin. He sits and dries himself by his small fire. Drút follows suit, grooming her coat with irritated fervour.

_You don't like the rain?_

She lets out a whine. _Makes the air too thick and heavy_.

Mordred laughs, poking the fire with a stick, and she barks playfully at him, feigning annoyance. _Has it got your coat in knots?_

_You're a fine one to talk!_ She jumps up onto her hind legs and gently pushes him over, then licks at where his hair has taken the weather as its cue to curl up tight and neat.

_I get it from my mother,_ he says, thinking of Elan's hair, how she wrestles its unruly mass into a pulled-back bundle with strips of fabric. When she is feeling patient, she will twist it into dozens of tiny braids, but Mordred's hair is not yet long enough for that, and besides, he likes the feel of it loose. Free.

A week before Imbolc, he ducks out of the tent with a bundle of daisies in his hands. Elyir, the hunter who had taught him and Kara archery, is sitting by the main fire, and she waves him over. He goes, twisting stems back and forth between his fingers. They fray, then snap.

"I'm going to the city," she begins, without preamble, as soon as Mordred has sat down. "I have some work to do there. I know you've wanted to visit for some time. Would you like to come with me?"

Mordred considers. "How long?"

"A month. I have a friend there, a Druid. He has need of some help, and it will take some time. I have already asked your mother: if you want to, you can go."

Mordred watches the embers in the firepit glow, and blows on them absentmindedly. They flare, white-hot. "Alright."

Three days pass in an odd limbo, Elan helping him pack and Kara tiptoeing around him, not-talking about not-talking about not-talking about it. Drút noses around the tent, caught between them. On the last evening, Kara throws her arms around him abruptly after dinner.

"Come home safe."

It's not a question, but he nods anyway.

They leave before dawn.

The spring downpours have mostly rained themselves out, come early and gone soon, so the sky is clouded but dry as he and Elyir wind around the base of the mountains. Mordred fiddles with the pendant tucked under his scarf. Once they leave the valley, the land they are crossing is open, with only a few small copses of trees breaking the smooth line of the horizon. Clothed as he is in his blue cloak, and with his skin sun-warmed and darkening by shades in the spring's light, he feels horribly conspicuous. Naked and exposed. The first night they camp, Elyir lights a fire with flint rather than words, and Mordred stares uncomprehendingly into the flames until sleep takes him.

The forest road, when they reach it at noon the next day, is little more than a track, wide enough only for a cart and horse. They pass a few traders as they go, and the road grows busier as they go on. Mordred guesses they're one day out from the city when a patrol passes them. Elyir catches up to him and pulls him to the side of the path, and the two of them wait politely while Knights in deep red cloaks parade past on grand stallions. Mordred watches with wide eyes, drinking in every detail. A fair-haired man glances down as he passes, and smiles at Mordred; he smiles back, timidly.

In the end, they make it to the city just before nightfall, and after answering a few questions at the gate, are allowed in. Mordred stares around at the dim streets and low houses, broken up here and there by a brazier crackling lazily as it casts flickering red-orange light across the wide, cobbled road. At Elyir's bidding, he turns away from the citadel and hurries after her towards a section of small, run-down buildings huddled against the outer wall. They stop at a windowless house and Elyir knocks three times: after a moment, the door opens. Backlit by a warm orange glow, a man with straight, age-silvered hair and weathered features gives them an appraising look.

"Ah, Elyir. And you must be Mordred. Come in, come in."

The inside of the house is cramped. At one side, a pot sits bubbling over a contained fire-stove, surrounded by half-open cupboards with contents overspilling. A table, loaded with piles of wood scaps and bones, takes up the middle of the room, attended by five fragile-looking stools, and the closest wall is harassed by an overspilling dresser piled high with small boxes and crates.

The man introduces himself as Aedel, then gestures towards the back of the house: mutely, Mordred nods, and goes. He sets down his bag, and lays out his bedroll, worn by the journey. Sleep takes him quickly.

Mordred wakes late in the morning, overtired from days of travel, and by the time he crawls out of bed, the sun is long risen and he can hear the clatter and chatter of the city outside.

He passes the first three days wandering the Lower Town, marvelling at houses and cart-horses alike. When he finally stumbles across the market, after a half-hour of wandering through narrow streets chasing echoing calls, it takes his breath away. He tries meat pies and pastries, fresh bread and honey sweets all bought with coin that Elyir leaves for him in the mornings, and the square holds his attention for five days.

When he finally pulls himself away from the vendors hawking food and clothes and blankets and all manner of other wares, he goes to the Upper Town. The walk to the gate is a full half-hour from the small house by the wall, but if he leaves early, when the morning sun is yet creeping into the sky and a light mist still dusts the streets in silver, it's strangely lovely. He has not yet tired of the city sunrise. The streets glow gold in the mornings, and he thinks of Emrys.

In the higher streets, he sees courtiers and skilled workers and servants in the Royal Palace. A few polite questions direct him towards the market, lined with neat stalls selling expensive goods. He eats as he walks, raking his eyes over beautiful dyed blankets and intricately carved bowls and blown-glass vases. One vendor selling small jeweled daggers catches his attention, and he smiles, hand at the hilt of his own sword. This is his place. It feels right.

He moves without thought towards the citadel, where a crowd is gathering, and he continuous with timid curiosity. Stone walls rise all around him, and there is more glass here than he imagined existed in the whole world. So entranced by the architecture, he doesn't realise why the crowd is assembled into it is too late.

In the centre of the courtyard is a stack of wood that Mordred knows can only be meant for one thing.

He backs away. Catches a glimpse of the girl, the Druid symbol at her wrist. Black ink on white skin. He trips, catches himself, retreats away in horror and shame. He bursts towards the gate, where a servant, a young brown-skinned woman, catches his attention, and he pauses momentarily. Her expression is pained, and sad. She glances towards him as he approaches, and frowns, then relaxes.

"Do..." he begins, only to be cut off by a choking in his voice. He swallows, and clears his throat. "Do you know what they will do with her?"

Her face is something like sympathy. "Buried. In secret." Smoke on the air. She winces. "Sorcerers aren't allowed marked graves."

When he reaches the house, he walks around the back, doubles over in the alley, and throws up everything in his stomach. In his mind he sees flickers of flame, the gravestones in the mountain cave, and before, the small cairn they had built for Emshir, the woman who always whistled while she cleaned the cooking puts. Kara had decorated the stones with purple flowers. He rinses his mouth with water summoned into his hands, and curls into his bedroll.

There is no prayer here. No Goddess in this cage of cold stone. It's a long time before the darkness claims him.

"What would the King say?" The words come from his mouth so easily, like honey dripping off his tongue. "Sorcerers are not permitted marked graves." Chain wraps his chest like a snare, and fear bites at his bones.

He wakes shivering in the dark. Does not sleep the rest of that night.

He wanders the Lower Town in a daydream. Gone is the magic, the brightness, the life. The marketsquare chatter is just noise. The streets are ugly and narrow. The bread turns to ash in his mouth. Brazier-smoke clings to him like stormclouds, heavy and close. When he slips into dreams, he sees a grave in the woods, sits and stares at the cairn for hours and cannot bring himself to move away. In the end, he tucks himself inside the house and sparks silver between his fingers, reacquainting himself with magic, but it is hollow comfort. He has walked into a city of thieves and traitors, magic-eaters and murderers. This city would see him burn, and leave him nameless to sleep in the stone. This city would cut out his still beating heart. Kingslayer, he thinks, and the flame he had been holding between two fingers goes out.

They leave the city at first light on a day when mist clings close to the ground. As they pass from cobbles onto tracks, packed soil and the roots of trees underfoot, the first around Mordred's heart loosens, ever so slightly.

Step by step, he walks home.


	7. Reconciliation

When he returns, Kara is in his clearing, practicing archery in easy silence. She glances up as he approaches, then frowns, and he notices the wisps of black smoke drifting lazily about his head. He feels the most tentative touch, her mind just barely glancing against his, and a single tear rolls down her cheek. "Oh, Mordred."

He offers an unsteady smile. "I am sorry I missed your anniversary."

She weighs his apology. Everything behind it. Everything she wanted for him. Everything that cannot be.

"It's alright. You had to go somewhere different to me."

She goes back to shooting, and he draws his sword. Every practiced swipe cuts down a murderer, every thrust slits the throat of a dishonest man. His form is poor, footwork made clumsy and slow by his anger, but he cannot bring himself to care. Nearby, Kara holds herself regal, in perfect form, boots planted in the soil. Under the setting sun and the anonymity of the forest, he imagines killing the King.

The next morning, he wakes to the warmth of summer and a solid weight across his legs, and he sits up with a startle so see Drút staring back at him, tongue hanging out in excitement. Kara, behind her, is sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling on her boots.

_Welcome home._

He wraps his arms tightly around her neck, allowing his fingers to relax against the soft fur. After a moment, he presses his forehead against hers and closes his eyes.

_Sweet Drút. I have missed you._

_Shall we go running?_ Kara asks, standing.

He breathes in, and lets out his first laugh in weeks. _Goddess, yes._

They cover ground fast, loping along at a jog, Mordred relishing the thud of soil under his boots even as Kara teases him to keep up. Drút yips and barks with the pleasure of a puppy, and when Kara lets out an inarticulate shout of joy he joins her, hearing their voices echo down the valley and out into the endless, wonderful sky. The air is clean and pure, and on instinct, Mordred throws up a hand a calls down a drifting rain of flowers. Floating gently down, they scatter themselves across his arms, settle on Drút's fur, decorate Kara's hair. A delicate rainbow of life. She smiles at him, and the normalcy of being back among the plants and the rivers and the growing, living things of the world settles his heart like an anchor holding a ship fast in a storm. That night, Kara pushes their bedframes close together, and he falls asleep with his hand tucked into hers.

He rises a Knight, and just for a moment, he feels invincible.

They fill up the wild space of the valley with movement and noise even as slow summer passes into unremarkable autumn, which they spend picking herbs and berries and things to gather before the winter. Mordred stays far away from the western treeline, and Kara does the same. Camelot is his destiny, and for either of them to deny it would be akin to denying that the sun yet rises in the sky, but that does not mean he can forget. In mid-autumn, they pass a willow attended by errant swarms of river-flowers, and he thinks of an unmarked grave somewhere far west, in open places where there is nothing to shelter the dead.

When winter arrives, it comes cold. Snow barely falls, the air too bitter-dry and freezing for any to form, and Mordred helps two others seal up the cave entrance with magic to keep in what heat they can. They last through it, though, as they always do, and Drút at least is untroubled by the season, coming and going as she pleases.

Kara asks her, once, what it is like to be apart from her pack, now. Drút considers for a long while. _It is strange,_ she replies eventually, _to know that I am more now than I would have been, more than I once was. More than myself. But my place is with you. I belong among your people more than my own. Whatever my life would have been without you, I would not want it._

_How can you say that for sure?_ Mordred asks.

_Because your life has been my life's best part._

All through the winter months, the three of them barely leave each others' sight, breathing in what they had missed while Mordred had been gone. Here, now, when the world around them is frozen in time, they can be gentle. He has missed it. Reminding himself of the feel of blankets and beds and friends is at once harder and easier than he thought it would be.

_Your life has been my life's best part,_ he thinks, and his mind is not on Kara, or Elan, but a boy made of gold. But it's alright. Kara understands, now.

Spring arrives quietly, in a rainshower once the air is finally warm enough to remember the taste of water, and Mordred wakes on his twelfth anniversary-day to the tell-tale patter of raindrops on rock. He dashes for the cave entrance, and Drút follows, paws thudding against the path. They burst out into the world and Drút throws her head back to howl in unrestrained happiness in the sky. Through the blur of joy, Mordred can see each raindrop glow a faint gold, backlit by the rising sun.

They go hunting the following day, Mordred and Kara each well-armed and Drút itching for a run after months cooped up in the cave. Through the long months they have held each other close and warm, but the new light fills them, and the morning is spend bounding through the woods like they did in the autumn. By noon, though, they have calmed, and Drút flicks her tails against his legs.

_You've grown your claws. Shall we catch some dinner?_

They bring home three rabbits for supper, and Elan gently admonishes each of them in turn as she scrubs at their hair with a towel: Drút's coat is damp and fluffy, Kara's lies stringy and flat, while Mordred's is pulled into a nest of tangles by the moisture. Elan's own hair is tightly coiled where she had tied it back with a scrap of linen. Still, they chat and laugh as Mordred skins the rabbits and Kara cuts potatoes and roots into a stew. Mordred adds two rabbits to the soup and tosses the other to Drút, who yips in thanks before beginning to eat.

After dinner, Elan hums softly as she cleans, a melody Mordred does not know. The almost-mournful tune fixes itself in Mordred's head as they go about their days in spring: Kara catches him humming the notes in staccato to the rhythm of his steps while they spar one even, and then uses his giggling as a distraction to tackle and disarm him. He yelps in mock-protest, but lets her wrestle him to the ground, and they roll around in the dirt until he can't breathe for laughing and she is filthy and ecstatic. On Imbolc, in the mid-morning, she obligingly sits while he weaves a crown of daffodils into her hair, then follows him into the forest.

Summer comes with one last burst of rain that paints a brilliant rainbow across the blue of the sky. The next morning, Mordred wakes too warm, kicking off his covers. It's the work of a moment to rouse Kara, then dress in a light shirt and breeches and drape a long, dark red scarf around his neck. They pass the day wandering the woods, but in the absence of animals to hunt, they spend most of their time pulling up wild onions and turnips. As they walk by the river, downvalley where it is deep and wide, Kara spots a few large catfish, and pins three to the riverbed with arrows before the rest escape downstream and out of sight. Kara tugs off her boots and wades in, pulling out their spoils. She tosses one to him and he considers its weight, and guesses it will make for a good dinner. That evening, Kara makes a campfire by the stream and the four of them eat fire-roasted fish, warming themselves by the golden flames in the cool night air.

A large fire burns in the centre of a small town, late into the evening, and people spin and dance around the edges, singing songs Mordred has never heard before. He approaches tentatively, searching for an empty spot to sit. None of the people notice him, save one boy with black hair, who turns at the sound of his footsteps. The firelight is behind him, and in the dark Mordred cannot make out his face. "Come, have a seat." He gestures at the spot on the bench beside him.

He sits. "Thank you, Emrys."

"It's a nice song, isn't it?"

"It is new," Mordred allows. "None of it is real, though."

"This is not," Emrys agrees, gesturing behind them at the dancing, the fire, the songs drifting up into the stars. "But this." He presses a hand gently against Mordred's own.

He pauses, for a long, long breath. Draws it in. Lets it go.

"When I meet you..."

"No. I will not recognise you. Not at first." Emrys's voice is sad. "But you will know me." In the dark, Mordred swears he sees a spark of gold. "You will know me."

He wakes late in the morning, sticky with sweat, a nameless dread sinking in his chest. He dresses sluggishly, and emerges into the dim sunlight filtering through the cave entrance. Elan is sitting by the main firepit - burned out, unneeded in the hot summer days - with a tall man who Mordred recognises after a moment as Cerdan, a scout-hunter who spends most of his time out of camp, travelling. She beckons him over, and he goes, the taste of imagined smoke in his mouth.

He says nothing as Elan informs him that Cerdan is travelling to the city in two days to pick up supplies. He says nothing as Cerdan says that Elan has agreed to let Mordred go, as long as he does not bring any weapons that might draw attention to him. He says nothing when Kara finds him later, shivering in the warm air. He says nothing to Drút when she tries to nudge him out on a run.

He says nothing at all.

This time, the walk out the valley feels like fleeing a predator. By the time they have passed through the sloping plains and reached the forest road, worry has tightened like a rope about Mordred's limbs, crumpling him like river-reed. So small. So flimsy. So easy to kill. Through the forest, he flinches as every snapped twig. When a patrol rides past, red cloaks fluttering in the light breeze, he scrambles off the road in an effort to get out of the way, and Cerdan gives him an odd look.

"What was that about?" he asks, once the horses and their men are disappearing into the trees.

"Just nervous to be near the city," Mordred replies, an edge of fear to his voice. Cerdan examines him a moment longer, then nods, apparently unwilling to press the issue. It is good practice, after all, for a Druid to be wary near Camelot. That night, Mordred tucks himself in the hollow at the base of a tree, and falls into an uneasy sleep, and dreams of flashes of red and silver in the dark.

When they draw near the gates, Mordred tucks his charm under his scarf, and though the guards clearly notice him, their eyes slide off him like water, questioning Cerdan instead. Once inside, they move towards the Upper Town. They pass through wide streets growing narrower, until they come to a small stall on a street so packed with people and goods alike that Mordred takes Cerdan's hand so they are not separated. The stallkeeper and Cerdan converse for a moment, and then the man pauses.

"I'm sorry."

He glances up. Spears against the ground. The chink of chainmail. Cerdan ducks and shoves him under the table, and he scuttles forward on instinct, as someone shouts for them to stop.

They run. Mordred weaves and Cerdan overturns baskets and upsets tables as they go, and the ground is hard under Mordred's feet, thudding like a drum: he thinks abruptly of running with Drút, under the endless trees. Fire floods his veins and gives him speed, as they turn from the exit in the face of more guards, and he dashes for the citadel, but a guard leaps from above and there is a sharp biting pain in his arm. He screams, a wild thing, and the guard flies backwards in a flurry of magic as Mordred stumbles towards the drawbridge. Distantly, he hears Cerdan call out, coaxing the gates shut. Hears the cry for him to run. Dashes towards the closing doors. Towards entrapment. Towards freedom.

Towards fate.

Pain eats the strength from his legs, and he slumps by a fountain, hidden by his charm. He remembers a dream, specks of gold in the dark, and opens his mind.

_Help! Help me! Please!_

A boy in red by the stairs puts a hand to his head, suddenly. Mordred takes in a sharp breath, focuses, and feels the deep and sonorous resonance, the wellspring of magic pooling and spilling out, pouring from the white city in silver streams down to the sea.

_Please, you have to help me._ Emrys catches sight of him. _Help me._

The clatter of guards arriving in the square. Mordred hears them call to split up and look for him.

_They're searching for me._

_Why are they after you?_

_They're going to kill me!_

"Guards, in here!"

Emrys glances around, then starts for a doorway by the base of the steps. _This way. Run. Run!_

The guards chase them, and he follows Emrys through the door, up a flight of stairs with a stone beast at the top, to a tiled room with high windows and then up a spiral staircase and through a wooden door.

"Have you forgotten how to knock, Merlin?"

"The guards are after him, I didn't know what to do."

Someone pounds on the door. A man's voice calls through. "My lady?"

He focuses on the woman who spoke, long black hair and a fine blue dress, but a spark of pain catches him unawares and he sways. Emrys takes his hand and pulls him through towards the back of the room as the lady says, "In there." He stumbles behind the curtain as Emrys tugs it across, then tucks himself against the wall, willing his legs to hold him. His arm burns like fire.

"Sorry to disturb you, my lady," he hears, as his vision begins to swim. "We're searching for a young Druid boy, we believe he came this way."

"I haven't seen anyone. It's just me and my maid."

Safe.

He looks at Emrys's face, and watches it blur. White. Black. Specks of gold.

He slips into darkness.

When he wakes, he is shirtless, lying on a bundle of scratchy blankets, and uncomfortable blankets. Emrys is across the room by a small window, looking out. The lady in blue moves next to Emrys. Follows his gaze. Outside, Cerdan's mind sparks bright and angry like a lit fire. Mordred closes his eyes as words drift in through the window, too far away for him to make out.

Cerdan's mind snaps, and he screams. There is a shatter, like breaking glass. Then silence.

A dragon roars and shakes the bones of the earth with it. Emrys. Gold. Fire, and a red sky.

He drifts awake to cold past against his arm and a temporary respite from the pain.

_Thank you, Emrys._

_Emrys? Why do you call me that?_

There are so many answers Mordred could give to that. He forces his eyes open, and picks the simplest. _Among my people, that is your name._

_You know who I am? How?_

Fate. Destiny. Visions shown to him years ago. Dreams he does not understand. A lifetime of knowledge washes up on the inside of his lungs, and he knows he could never explain to Emrys how it sounds to listen to the essence of the world made human, no way he could every explain how awesome and terrifying it is to have his voice in Mordred's head. No way to explain all that Emrys has ever been. His future hovers over him, nervous and whole and magic and utterly _human_ , and in the end Mordred says nothing at all.

"Speak to me."

He tries to hold his eyes open, but the darkness opens its jaws and swallows him whole.

"You and the boy are as different as day and night."

"Would should I not protect him?!"

_Morgana_.

"He said my name!"

"Did he?"

_Emrys._

"It's Merlin."

A wave of gold.

"You didn't turn your back on me. Please don't turn your back on him."

_Thank you, Emrys_ , he tries to say, but the ground shifts under him and magic washes over him, and he is lost.

When he wakes, they leave quickly. Morgana hurries him along and the rooms blur past: he allows himself to be led and forces a tentative smile, knowing it is what she expects. They make it through the passage from the armoury and out into the Lower Town before the clanging of a bell interrupts the night. Mordred winces, wishes fleetingly for the quiet of a forest, and then thinks of Kara, and cannot feel anything but gratitude. She, at least, is safe.

They're caught. Of course. He considers the face of the man who found them all the while as they drag him to the dungeons. The whispers come quickly. Dawn tomorrow.

He sits in a corner of the small cell and does not cry. This, he knows for certain: he will not die here. This city will never claim his bones. A sliver of moonlight pierces into his cell, painting the stone walls silver, and he turns his face upwards.

The man who caught him lets him out. This time, when they go, he feels free, like he could run without stopping or slowing till he reached the mountains. They pause, though, at the end of a tunnel, where a metal grate is all that stands between them and the sky. The man drops his torch to wrap his hands around the bars, and Mordred looks out, waiting for Emrys to appear, to feel the twist of magic around him like a pulled thread.

The bell, when it rings, hits him like a blow to the chest.

_Emrys_ , he tries, and knows instantly he has been heard. _Emrys? Please. They're coming._

Footsteps echo towards them, then the voices of guards. Mordred goes automatically for a dagger that is not there.

_I'm scared, Emrys. They will kill me. Don't do this, don't ignore me._ He is shaking with fear, and all that stands between him and the whole of Camelot is a lone man with a blade. _I know you can hear me. I thought you were my friend. I don't want to die, Emrys._

_You will not._ Mordred sags in relief. If destiny has spoken, it will be so.

The metal tears loose from the stone with a crash, and Mordred hears the whicker of a horse. He can't even revel in being back under the open sky before they're mounting up. Mordred notices the royal crest on the saddle-blanket, and suddenly, everything falls into place.

_Goodbye, Emrys,_ he says, as Arthur Pendragon kicks the horse into a trot. He thinks of his sister. Of all the ways in which she loves him. Of all the ways in which she knows she cannot. _I know that someday, we will meet again._


	8. Escape

A weight shakes itself from his shoulders as they lose themselves quickly in the trees. After interminable hours, they dismount, and Mordred feels the edge of warmth he knows are Druid minds even as the prince guides him towards three people who have come to meet him. Mordred goes to them without a word.

"We are forever indebted to you, Arthur Pendragon, for returning the boy to us."

"You must not let it be known that it was I who brought him to you."

The Druid in the centre nods. "We will tell no-one. You have my word."

The prince looks at him, and Mordred holds his gaze for a moment. Then, they turn to leave.

"Wait." He pauses, glances back. "I don't even know your name. At least tell me your name."

He glances up to the man who spoke, and he nods. "It's all right."

He takes a deep breath. "My name is Mordred."

Arthur smiles. "Good luck, Mordred."

He turns away, the man settles an arm across his shoulders, and they depart into the forest.

_What is your name?_ he asks, as soon as the would-be king has receded into the trees.

"I am Aglain. You're a long way from home, Mordred." Aglain smiles, and Mordred returns it, hesitantly. "I knew your mother. She came to us when she first left Camelot, with Ise. The girl she rescued."

"You knew Elan?"

"Yes. She was still quite young, of course. She went on, but Ise stayed here - this had always been her home."

Mordred considers this as the light around them grows a little brighter, moon filtering through the thinning leaves. "She is older than me, then. Ise."

Aglain nods. "She is older, indeed. In fact..." He pauses, for a moment. "Perhaps she could accompany you back. Next summer. We don't make a habit of travelling long distances in the autumn - it's dangerous, you understand, especially in the mountains - so you'll have to stay with us for a while. But you will get home. Don't worry."

They arrive at the camp just as daylight begins to seep through the trees. Dipping down into a small hollow in the ground, Mordred rounds the small verge and comes face-to-face with a cluster of green tents. He blinks, the openness of it a strange sight after years of dwellings lit only by firelight inside the dim closeness of a cave. This place seems open, and wild, and somehow much larger than itself.

Aglain leads him to a small rectangular tent, tucked into the side of the hollow by a small stream. "Ise?"

Faintly, Mordred hears rustling as someone moves around inside, then a thud. "Just a moment!"

Aglain stands back and Mordred copies, noting that the other two who had accompanied them have moved away, one disappearing into a tent across the settlement and the other coaxing a fire back to life. He catches a glimpse of gold. So they do use magic here, to light their fires if nothing else.

After a few minutes, the tent flap peels back and a tall girl in a brown dress steps out. Mordred peers up at her, trying to map her appearance onto what Elan might have seen. Short, wavy brown hair. Green eyes, cold and sharp. A pointed nose and a small mouth, smirking slightly, as though something about him is funny. He smiles timidly as she glances down at him.

"This is Mordred, Ise," Aglain says, breaking the silence. "Elan's child."

"Elan's child?" To her credit, Ise looks only mildly surprised. "I hadn't realised... Well, it's nice to meet you, Mordred. What brings you here?"

"Got caught in the city," he says, awkwardly. "Some people got me out."

She nods sympathetically. "I know how that is." Turning to Aglain, she adds, "You want me to look after him?"

"Just until next summer. Then he can go back to the mountains. Iseldir is at their camp right now." He turns to Mordred. "I can send him a message to bring back something, if there's anything from there you really need."

Mordred thinks of Kara. "My dagger," he says, finally. "And my sword."

At this, a contemplative look crosses Ise's face, and she turns to Mordred, clearly sizing him up. He shifts uncomfortable under her focus. Eventually, she relaxes, and a true smile spreads across her face, showing her teeth. "Deal. He can stay with me. And I don't mind him having weapons."

Aglain nods, apparently satisfied, and departs.

Ise's tent is warm, and smells of garlic and crushed sunflower seeds. A small bedframe dominates the floorspace, and a fire is at one end, a flap in the canvas above rolled back to let the smoke out. "Spare blankets are in the crates," she says, still smiling her wild grin as he enters. "The floor is flat and comfortable enough, you should be fine until you get a bedroll. You'll figure things out fine. Just don't go out into the forest at night, unless you want to deal with the serkets."

He nods, and fidgets uncertainly as she sits at her small table and picks up a half-finished woodcarving and a knife. "Um, is there anything I can do?"

She turns that piercing stare on him again, considering. "If you're offering," she nods her head towards a small pot over the firepit, "needs stirring every few minutes or so."

He sits on a small stool by the fire and gives the pot an experimental stir. She grunts, satisfied, and turns her focus to the carving. Mordred fiddles with the charm under his scarf. Safe, secret, silent. That evening, he curls up on the floor with a grey wool blanket and listens to Ise's breathing even out into the darkness of the night.

Kara is in a cell, and Mordred can feel his heart breaking, because this hurts so _much_ and he doesn't understand _why_. He was going to make it better. She is in a cell. He was going to make it better, but now he is in a cell, and she is not, and he blows through a barred door like it is paper as she falls and falls and falls.

When he wakes, it is still early, but Ise has already roused and is feeding wood scraps into the fire. As he folds up his blanket, she gives him another one of those wild grins. He wonders if she has ever smiled and not looked as though she is willing to eat a thunderstorm.

He fetches wood for the fire, and they eat sitting cross-legged on the floor, the table taken up by carving and sharp knives. When he's nearly finished, Ise asks conversationally, "So, what do you do?"

"Um." He thinks. "I'm good with a sword, mostly. And a bow. I hunt, back home, with Drút. She's our familiar. My sister and mine. She's a wolf. Um, Drút, not my sister." Ise smiles, and he forces himself to take a deep breath and stop tripping over his words. "I see things, sometimes, but that's not something I _do_. It just... happens."

"You're a vates?"

Despondently, he pushes at the last of his food with the spoon. "Don't think so. 'M just unlucky. But I don't know."

"All the Seers I've heard of are old and crusty," she declares, and then, with the air of someone who has decided a matter is closed, "I think you're something different."

He shrugs, and they don't talk about it again.

After food the next night, cooked by Ise over the communal campfire and eaten with the rest of the camp, there is singing and dancing; he watches in rapt fascination as men and women alike spin around the blaze, skirts and robes swirling in a beautiful daze of firelit colour. Once the revelry has died down, the group begins to sing, first a scattering of tunes, then as one - a quiet, slow song whose words Mordred does not know. He recognises the melody, though, and it stirs a homesickness in him he cannot swallow. He thinks again of Kara, of her warm hands and her bright eyes and her smile, and returns to his borrowed home alone.

Five days later, the boy Iseldir makes his way into camp in the late afternoon with a scabbard at his hip that Mordred would recognise anywhere. As he comes into the hollow, he notices Mordred, and starts towards him. "This is yours?" he asks, and Mordred nods. "Kara sends word. She says she'll look after Drút until you see her again."

He accepts the gift gratefully. "Thank you."

That night, he goes to bed with his fingers brushing gently over the hilt of the dagger. Someone - Kara, he imagines - has wound a braid of grass-stems around the handle, with a spark of power to keep it in place. Grown things and growing things. Life and magic.

Ise asks, over breakfast the next morning, whether he is a healer.

"A little. Elan taught me some. I owe her a lot." He considers. "I'm not suited to it, though, not really. My sister is. And I don't know how much I would be able to do without magic, anyway. I try not to become so reliant on it, but..."

"But you're so used to existing with it that you can't imagine cutting it out," she finishes.

He rubs his fingers together and tries to imagine a life without magic. Without mindspeak. Without Elan, without Kara. Without destiny. Imagines himself with white skin and brown hair and blue eyes, with a name that doesn't mean destroyer, with no knowledge of his mother. Unbidden, the image of sparking gold leaps into his mind and he knows, for better or worse, his fate is a part of him. He would be nothing without it. _Your life is my life's best part,_ he thinks, and imagines Emrys.

As the weather cools, he keeps close to the camp. Occasionally, he will accompany another on a hunt, but mostly, he scavenges the woods for herbs and roots and sun-sweet berries. Ise, with her wolf's grin and sparkling eyes, barters his best finds for small carved charms - swiftness, silent footfall, unerring accuracy - which he adds to his pendant-string. In the evenings, he practices his bladework again, then works enchantments into his weapons to keep them sharp and strong and true. The twist of grass that decorates his dagger-handle is so well-kept he doubts a forest fire would touch it.

When the autumn fest arrives, Ise and Mordred wrap themselves in prayer and spend the day in contemplative reflection, asking the Goddess for her blessing, for kindness, and for courage. A chill wind twists into their tent when they retire for the evening, and Mordred relights the fire before they lay down for sleep.

_There is a storm coming._

_Emrys?_

_I'm sorry. This winter will not be as kind as the last._

_You know this?_

_I do._


	9. Endurance

The storm front arrives quickly, and without warning from the sky. There is barely time for the tents to be sealed against the snow and the scouts to return before it hits. Ise's normal composure shatters and she half-scampers into their tent with the demeanour of a scared pup, wrapping herself in her bedroll and burying her face in blankets as the first clap of thunder sounds, shaking the distant mountains. All that first night, Mordred sits with her, holding her hand and chattering about mindless nothings to distract her from the flashes of lightning through the canvas and the roll of drums that follows. Orange light flickers and dances, casting shadows into the corners, and a nameless fear settles in Mordred's stomach.

He reaches out for the mind of the camp healer, Kin, and finds her. _I recieved a warning from the Goddess,_ he says, and is glad she cannot tell it is half a lie. _We should be ready for a sickness. A bad one._

_We can only try._

When he wakes, he feels bitterly sluggish, cold all the way down to his bones. Ise lays beside him in the bed, breathing softly, and he wriggles out from the blankets carefully so as not to disturb her. She shifts slightly in her sleep, and Mordred tucks her back in. Rubbing his hands together in an effort to get his blood flowing, he checks and refastens his clothes, layer upon layer that he had pulled on last night, his red scarf wrapped around his head to keep his ears warm and his hair out of his eyes. He crouches and lights a fire. Last night's wood has mostly burned down, and he glances across at Ise before ducking quietly out of the tent.

The force of the cold strikes him like a sharp knife. A phantom pain ghosts his ribs and he presses a hand against them to hold in imagined blood. The wood stockpile - large and well-stacked, he notes with some relief - is close, and he pulls an armful large enough to burn through the rest of the day. The camp should stay warm through winter, at least.

By the time he has built the fire up to a blaze that will warm the tent, Ise is awake, and has set to putting together breakfast. For lack of another task, Mordred takes up the embroidery on the table - he has more nimble fingers than her, and enjoys the work more too - and begins diligently stitching. He doesn't miss the way Ise flinches each time thunder growls in the distance.

"I don't like storms," she says abruptly, just after midday.

"Me neither," he replies, honestly. "But it will be over soon enough."

She fixes him with a stare. "Do you believe that?"

He takes a deep breath. "I have to."

The morning of the third day, he takes advantage of a temporary lull in the storm to go out. Beyond the tight circle of warming-spells and fires, the world is laid stark and bare, a sheet of sharp white where snow has fallen and half-frozen into ice. Dotted amongst the shivering green, some trees smoke faintly, needles abandoned and bark tinging with the edges of rot.

Even standing at the edge of the hollow for a few minutes is enough to bite at his nose and the exposed parts of his face. In autumn, he checked his snares quickly, but now he hurries, driven by the icy ache of his slow blood. He finds one caught rabbit, already frozen to death in the snow, and a small waterfowl, still alive.

When he returns, it's to Kin in their tent, asking Ise if she can make something warming and tasty that will bring on sleep. He throws Kin a questioning glance as he enters, and she hastens to explain. "It's Osa. She came to my tent a couple of hours ago, saying she couldn't see right, felt dizzy. She starting coughing not long after, having trouble breathing." She lowers her voice sadly. "I doubt she will live out the night."

_Why is this happening to us?_

_I don't know._

"That's not good enough, Emrys." His voice is shaking with anger. "Haven't we suffered enough?"

They're on a battlefield. The sky above is death-red, scored with black clouds and shuttered between two sheer cliffs. Emrys kneels in the dirt, staring down at a dead man in a pool of crimson. Mordred knows his own face is striped in blood. He is dressed in grey and black, a cloak draped from his shoulders like a shadow. The sword in his hand is not his own.

"Why this too?"

_I don't know._

" _Talk to me!_ " Mordred screams, and feels the rock around them resound with the weight of it.

Slowly - so slowly - Emrys looks up. His eyes are bloodshot blue and utterly human. "Why should I?" he grates out, and Mordred recoils. "You did this."

"I did nothing," he protests, desperately. "I have hurt no-one - what fate ordains for me will not be, I will protect the King-"

" _You kill him!_ " Emrys roars. "You cut him apart and he _dies_ and all the _regret_ in the world will not bring him _back_!"

Dimly, Mordred feels the world hit his knees. In the face of destiny, he crumples. "I don't want this, Emrys. I have never wanted it."

"I know," Emrys says, sounding at once unbelievably ancient and intolerably young. "But you kill him anyway."

"Why are they sick? Why are they dying?"

"Because bad things happen, whether we want them to or not. You can change them. You can delay them. But you cannot outrun destiny, Mordred, no matter how far you go, no matter how hard you try."

Mordred bows his head. There is a dull thud, as his sword drops to the ground. Drút licks his palm. He moves over to Emrys, slowly, and kneels in front of him, head tilted down. "Stay with me?" He holds out a hand, eyes fixed on buckled leather boots. It comes a surprise when he feels the gentle touch of delicate, calloused fingers against his own.

"Till the very end."

They sit together, and Drút lays herself over their feet, and they stay like that till the sun sets and the red sky turns to black. Emrys sighs, and tips his head onto Mordred's shoulder, and they watch the stars.

By dawn, Osa is dead. Two more carpenters, a woman and a man, fall sick, and Mordred wraps his hands and face as he takes on the task of carrying her body out to the place where they will be buried. A new sign stands by the healing tent, warning people away if they are healthy. No friends will come to weep over Osa's corpse. No tears for the dead.

He does his part in caring for the sick over the next week, even as their numbers mount. By then, the storm has finally abated, though ice still crunches endlessly underfoot. His glimpses of the sky tell him all he needs to know - it has utterly spent itself. There will be no more storms this winter.

Besides, he thinks grimly, looking at the row of eight freshly-dug graves, the damage has already been done. Most are forbidden from coming to the graveyard. More will come. It will not do to bury wasted and already half-rotten bodies in front of those trying to mourn. Better to let them weep in private, and see the markers only when the sickness has passed. Kin is still working feverishly to help, but Mordred knows there is something deeper at work here than simple infection and cold. He hates himself that he had barely known these people, hates himself that he does not grieve at all. The fifteenth day is the first without a new body, and he promises Kin he will wake early so she may sleep late and get rest.

"It's come, hasn't it."

The words are not a question, but Mordred nods anyway. "Goddess willing, it has nearly passed, but I could not say for sure one way or another."

The sun is creeping upwards across the horizon. Emrys rises from where they have sat all night, and holds out his hand. Mordred takes it. They walk slowly south, towards the open lands of Camelot, and he does not let go.

When Mordred wakes, it is to find the young man who had fallen asleep with blood draining from his eyes sitting up. Glancing around.

"Geri, was it?"

The man - Geri - nods. "Yes."

"Are you feeling better?"

"Yes. I can breathe fully again, and my head no longer spins."

"Your vision is clear?" Mordred asks.

"Yes."

Mordred smiles. "You will be fine. For now, get some rest."

The man lies back down. Within minutes, Mordred hears his breath even out into the gentle pattern of sleep. Sighing he leaves the tent to stretch, and stares at the rut his feet have carved into the snow, leading to the graves.

But Geri has recovered. Perhaps it is ended.

When she wakes, Kin pronounces Geri well. No more come to the tent. Mordred places the last headstone. The dead are interred, the living allowed to grieve. Mordred spends a full day clearing the air in Kin's tent that has clung close and heavy with blood and death. He goes back to Ise.

It's enough.

The rest of the snows pass quietly, midwinter lost somewhere in the symphony of dying, and the first morning Mordred hears a shower of rain patter down on the leaves above, he almost weeks for joy. Once the snow is washed away enough that he can see more green than white again, he calls to Ise, _Are you coming?_

_Where?_

_Out._

By the time she is ready, he is bouncing with nervous energy, and breaks into a quick sprint. Together, they spring upwards, whooping as they dash out of the hollow and among the trees, reveling in clean air and the blue, blue sky.

His thirteenth anniversay passes without affair. The morning after, he wakes with an odd ache in his chest, thinking of Kara, and has to pull on his boots and go for a walk to clear his head. He whistles as he goes, a chirpy tune that Ise had taught him, and smiles at the answering chorus of early-morning birdsong. The weather is finally growing warmer, the forest green-dappled again, and he thinks of the valley. Soon, he promises himself. Soon he will go home.

The sun has gained a few shades of strength by the time he returns, to find Ise awake and coaxing the fire back into life. She glances up as he enters, and something in his expression must catch her attention. "Is everything all right, Mordred?"

He weighs his options for a moment, then answers honestly. "Missing home."

She nods understandingly as he seats himself. "You could tell me about it. So I know what to expect."

"What to expect?"

"I asked Aglain." She smiles, toothy and broad. "Once we're past the equinox, he will let me take you back. It will be interesting, to see Elan again. So, tell me about it."

Mordred pauses for a moment, then opens his mouth and begins. The solid comfort of the mountains, of being surrounded by stone, and of climbing them in summer to see out across the world, all the way to the city. Pressed dirt tracks barely wide enough for one winding between small hills and down steep gullies. Ravines made in miniature, rocks rising above on either side, and the echoing burble of a stream further downvalley. The trees, clustered in their irregular bunches, roots finding purchase wherever they can between rock and stone and river. The tell-tale rustle of a fox or a rabbit disappearing into the undergrowth. Skimming stones across the small pool just outside the caves, and splashing in the shallows on hot days before retreating into the eternal cool, dry dark of enclosed stone and the permanent embrace of the world.

He doesn't tell her about Kara. That feels private, somehow.

Over the following weeks, they exchange stories in turn. He talks about the spring rains as the snowmelt comes down from the mountains, and she remarks how the rivers swell when the sun begins to rise earlier in the east. He tells her about sunsets over ragged, inelegant slopes, and she explains the hushed reverence of twilight in the forest, where a dim golden glow still suffuses through the trees. The prayer-cloths that hang at the entrance to the cave are partners to the strips of bright fabric that adorn tent-poles and trees around the hollow. Valley-berry names are swapped for forest-roots, the halfway marker on the mountain pass given in return for the gravel-and-dirt roads busy with carts rumbling by. Mordred allows her words to paint him a story in shades of endless green, what his life might've been like had he grown up here, so close to the city, enshrouded by the trees. It's nice.

On the evening of a particularly warm day, Ise complains amicably that she is too hot to sleep, so they sit up into the dusk hours, Mordred working absently at some embroidery. He has just finished a flush of white flowers when he feels it. A high-pitched fear, close and sharp, but that mind- that mind he knows.

He is on his feet in a heartbeat, already calling to Aglain. _Wake up! Wake up!_

By the time he is out of the tent, Ise following a few steps behind in confusion, he receives a sleepy, _Mordred?_ in return.

_A woman to the west - the serkets. I know her, please. You have to help!_

Mercy of mercies, they reach her before it's too late. Mordred follows close behind, tucked behind Aglain as he entreats the serkets to retreat, and once they're gone, he ducks out from behind him, and sees her.

"What is her name?" Aglain asks, as he gently lifts her prone form into his arms.

"Morgana."

When she wakes, Mordred is outside the healing tent, conferring with Kin and Ise. He avoids their questions, for the most part, but tries to impress upon them the best of what little he remembers. A scared woman, as anyone growing up with magic in Camelot would be. But a kind woman nonetheless, gentle and caring. Selfless, to have helped him at such risk to herself.

He goes to the tent when Aglain bids him, and says what he thinks will comfort her, though his thoughts are miles away in a high city of white stone. Once Kin sets to wrapping her leg, he departs, and Ise tugs him with some force back to their tent.

"Sit, kid. Talk."

Sighing, he drops into a chair, and grapples for words. "I feel... I didn't- I wasn't expecting to see her again. Or at least, not this soon. She is..." He pauses, then continues. "I believe she feels a great deal more strongly about me than I do about her. She helped me. But. She's just."

"Just someone that helped you, and nothing more?" Ise asks, hatefully gentle. "You don't owe her anything. A favour given does not expect repayment."

"I feel off-balance," Mordred confides. "As though something is pushing me, and I don't have the strength to push back."

"Oh, kid," Ise says, and wraps him in a hug. That night, she lays her bedroll on the floor and sleeps alongside him, the mattress-frame unused.

He keeps to the tent the next morning, though he sees Morgana and Aglain walking together between the tents. The sense of ill-balance is growing, and feels as though he may shatter at any moment.

Just after noon, he sits up sharply, suddenly, as it resolves itself. "Ise."

She looks over, and pales at the fear in his voice, in his face. "Mordred?"

"Ise, you need to go. _Now_."

"Mordred?"

He gets to his feet, grabbing a bag and shoving it into her hands. She moves, startled by his suddenness, and begins packing on automatic: bread, a waterskin, her newly-embroidered cloak, her knives. "They're coming, Ise, you need to go, we all need to leave-" he adds a small round of cheese to the hastily-packed bag, then pulls the string of the bag shut and helps her shoulder it- "go east, and if I'm wrong, you can always come back, but please, just go, I'll come and meet you as soon as I can-"

She wraps him in a tight, fierce hug. "See you soon, kid."

And she goes.

He feels the bright spark of Emrys's mind move across camp even as he picks up his sword and dagger and hastily sets that at his hip. He double-checks his charms and presses his fingers into the first, the small token of wood he had carved himself. _Goddess, if ever you would keep me unseen, do it now_. He jams a wrapped package of dried meat, his needles and twine, his eating-knife and a small flask of fire oil into the small pouch Kin gifted him only a week ago, and slings it across his chest, then pulls his blue cloak over the top and ties it at his throat. He ducks of the tent and snatches down the two strips of prayer cloth tied there: one for Ise, and one for him. Fumbling, he reties them on the inside of his cloak even as he moves swiftly towards the east entrance of camp, and something in his chest tugs at him to warm them, to save them all, but they wouldn't listen and it would waste valuable time and he needs to get to Ise _he can't leave her alone_ -

The barking of dogs sounds just as he scrambles out the eastern side of the hollow, and he runs. Behind him, discordant shouting, cries drowning out the gentle symphony of the forest, this cacophony of cruelty. His feet pound the packet dirt below and sound out a drumbeat to the music of dying. He hears a loud crash. A scream.

_Ise?_ he calls out, desperately. _Ise!_

Faintly, distantly, he feels a spark, turns himself a little further north, and runs with all the speed he has ever known. His chest begins to burn with the effort, but he can tell he is gaining ground on Ise, until he can reach out to her. _Don't stop! Keep going, I'm catching up!_

After interminable minutes measured only by his racing heart, he sees a lick of colour between the trees ahead, and calls out, _Behind you!_

A twist of movement as she glances back, and pauses to allow Mordred to come to rest alongside her, panting harshly with the effort of running. He reaches out childishly and she grabs him without hesitation, wrapping him in a tight embrace. The wind is blowing, and Mordred can already smell smoke on the air, can see its tell-tale dance where it twists above the forest.

_Are you alright? Are you hurt?_

_No, thanks be to the Goddess, I got out before- before-_

She covers her mouth, involuntarily, and it suddenly strikes Mordred how young she seems.

After a moment, she shakes herself. _We need to keep moving_. She takes his hand, her eyes flare a brief coppery gold and a working passes over them both. When he steps, the ground springs back as though he were never there. _Let's go_.

They stop at nightfall, when they have moved far enough north-east that they can no longer taste woodsmoke on the breeze. Crouched in the hollow under an oak tree, they dare not light a fire, so they eat chunks of cold bread and dried meat strips. Without bedrolls or blankets, she pulls him into an embrace and wraps them both in their cloaks. Mordred falls asleep pretending neither of them is crying.

He wakes early the next morning, damp and cold but not unbearably so. He nudges Ise awake, then stands and stretches, wincing at the crackle of his joins from sleeping scrunched up. While she rubs her eyes, he jumps up and down, windmilling his arms to get the blood flowing, and the movement reveals the two cloths tied to the pouch-hook inside his cloak. Pulling off the pale green linen, he offers it to Ise, and she gives him a smile. _Had time to bring them with you?_

I _think we may need the Goddess with us now more than ever_ , he answers honestly, rubbing his own dark blue cloth between his fingers. She takes hers, and shucks up her shirtsleeve to tie it around her upper arm where it will go unseen, a silent protector. _So. Where do we go?_

She considers for a long moment, while she kicks her legs back and forth in an effort to get out sleeping cramps. _We're north of the mountains. On the east side of the forest. Travelling through the mountains alone without bedrolls or food would be suicide, so we cannot go south. North will take us to the main road, past the mountains of Andor. West towards the city, though we would need to skirt north around the ridge. East to Cenred's kingdom._

_The forest is probably crawling with soldiers_ , Mordred points out despondently. _I do not think we can go west. And the main road is dangerous - they patrol constantly there. We would be found in days._

She turns to him and rests a comforting hand on his shoulder. "East it is, then."

They travel mostly in uneasy silence, never straying out of each other's range of sight. Ise whistles while they go, quiet mournful tunes that evolve as the days draw on. Occasionally, they pause to dig up wild vegetables or pin an unfortunate rabbit. After a week and a half, when the ground of has levelled, Ise suddenly grabs Mordred and shoves him under a dirt dugout at the base of a large oak, then crawls in after him and throws her dirt-stained cloak over them. They lay there, shivering against each other, for three hours, until the voices of the trading caravan have faded into the trees.

As the weeks wear on, they settle into a kind of weary rhythm. Walking and hunting. Gathering and spellcrafting. Exhaustion and hunger. A deep, dull ache has settled in Mordred's bones, and at night he dreams of Kara, her face streaked in angry tears. _Why didn't you come home? Why didn't you come home?_

When they finally break free from the treeline and onto the endless plains, Mordred finds himself weeping. The next morning, after spending a few hours tying firewood under Ise's pack in a practiced bundle, they climb to the crest of the small rise they have emerged onto to get their bearings. "We've gone further south than we thought," Ise concludes, after a few minutes of scanning the horizon. "If we keep moving east, we'll hit the road near the border soon enough. That should take us to some villages at least. Might be able to buy a tent, some bedrolls."

"Buy? We don't have any coin." She gives him a smile, and digs around in her knapsack before producing a small pouch. It jingles. Mordred stares, wide-eyed. "We didn't pack that."

"It was already in there. I never take it out. Better than anyone, kid, you should know it never hurts to be prepared." Her grin is wild, and Mordred is reminded suddenly of the first time he met her, when he thought she could swallow a thunderstorm if only she wanted to. Now, he thinks, she would eat anything if only it would keep her alive. He smiles back, mouth closed, pressing his tongue against the points of his teeth.

Their progress across the open land is quicker without the constant press and twist of trees and odd inclines, sharp drops and strange paths. Ahead of them, the road draws nearer, and on midsummer, Mordred spots the waymarker that means they have left Camelot. By noon the next day, they catch sight of a village.

It is nightfall before they reach it, mercifully downhill most of the way, and they reach the town a road-weary but ultimately amicable pair of young travel companions. One of their coins buys them a night in a single-bed room with a promise of breakfast in the morning. Mordred spreads his cloak over the mattress and Ise unties hers to use as a blanket.

"We're going to be alright after all, aren't we?"

"Yeah, kid. We are."

Breakfast is a small bowl of broth and the first bread in months; Mordred resists the urge to wolf it down, forcing himself to eat slow and measured. The warm, solid weight of a good meal seeps into his bones, and he gives Ise a true smile, bright and full, for the first time since they had sprinted east with the whole world chasing behind. Ise eats quickly, then wanders over to make polite conversation with the tavern-keeper, who grudgingly says that a lady named Hunith might have supplies she could sell them, and that they'll want to head south to Engerd. Mordred gets up from the table, neatly stacks their bowls, and follows Ise out into the bright summer morning.

The woman, Hunith, does indeed have two bedrolls, and a knapsack beside, and Ise barters her down to four coins and a day's labour apiece for all three items, so they spend the long hours of the eternal summer day hauling baskets around the village, feeding the lone horse and weeding in the fields. It's backbreaking work, and by the end of the day, Mordred is thoroughly exhausted, muscles aching and utterly spent.

They depart early the next day, but a few hours after dawn, and Hunith gifts them a loaf of bread for the road. Ise thanks her profusely, and in exchange gives her a small wood charm from her own belt, carefully carved. "To keep storms away," she says, and Mordred hears the edge of old grief in her voice. "I wish you the best."

"Safe journeys," Hunith replies, and something about her makes Mordred pause. But they have to go, so he turns away and does not look back.

After the months before, the road to Engerd is blessedly easy: it is narrow, but well-kept and clear, and for the most part flat and smooth. On the third evening, they pass a small caravan just as nightfall is approaching, and after a short conversation, Ise and Mordred join the group - two men, four women - at their campfire, and join in with the quiet chatter until sleep tugs them all down.

True enough to the tavern-keeper's grunted words, they reach the town late in the afternoon on their sixth day of travel, and pass into its boundaries without thoroughfare - unlike Ealdor, this place sees too many travellers for the arrival of a young woman and a teenager to be remarkable. Mordred sticks close to Ise. By the time they find a shop that might sell better travelling supplies, it is already closed, so Ise retires them instead to a small room in the tavern across the street - another coin, and Ise's promise of their help in the kitchen in the morning - and Mordred spends the evening patching up a small rip in his trousers.

In the morning, they wake to the insistent clatter of a town coming to life. After the long quiet of the forest, the echo of forge-hammers and the general drumbeat of people taking to the streets seem discordantly loud. Ise quickly braids back her hair and Mordred pauses for a moment, then pulls the prayer-cloth from the inside of his cloak and ties it at the back of his head.

_Help in the kitchen_ turns out to mean breakfast for the entire tavern. The owner of the inn, a stout, brown-skinned woman named Jin, explains that their previous cook suddenly upped sticks and left to be with his sweetheart a week ago, and neither hide nor hair has been heard of him since.

"Damn girl's a fool, if you ask me," Jin complains amicably, as she directs the two of them to making food. "Talents like hers, she could do a fine sight better than that good-for-nothing lad."

"Talents?" Mordred asks politely as he sets to chopping up vegetables.

"She's got a spark in her," Jin replies, wiggling her fingers for effect. "She came to visit him here once, and I swear she sent his hat flying with a gust of wind. Lit her eyes up all bright, too." Mordred startles a little, and listens close when Jin next speaks, but there is no animosity in her voice that he can hear. "Silly bit of magic, but he never did anything half that impressive in his life. You two seem pretty practiced at this, say."

Mordred nods. "We did all the cooking back home." Barely even a lie.

Jin considers for a moment. "Girl - what'd you say your name was, Ise? How'd you and the kid like a job?"

Ise glances up from her carefully-attended pot. "Go on."

"Well, that idiot boy isn't coming back, and my help has only gone and gotten sick, so I'm short a cook and a skivvy. You two cook all the breakfast and dinner every day, plus clean the kitchen in the afternoon, and you get three square meals a day each plus board in the room you stayed in last night, and one coin a week in pay."

Ise considers. "Another bed in the room, so neither of us has to sleep on the floor."

"Deal."

Once the breakfast rush is over, Ise goes out to buy some things, and Mordred helps Jin shift a bedframe and a mattress into their room, the woman cursing cheerfully all the while. Mordred deposits his bag in an unoccupied corner, then heads back down to the kitchen and begins to clean.

Ise comes back in mid-afternoon and helps Mordred scrub the last of the pans clean, not without some effort. They find five minutes to sit down and look at the blankets Ise bought - proper wool, warm and soft, one dark blue and one charcoal-grey. Mordred takes them upstairs, and by the time he's back down, the first patron of the evening arrives, and their work begins. They finish just before dark, and Mordred spreads out his new blanket, then falls into a dreamless sleep.

They find their feet, after a few days. It takes a week to work out that staggering their sleep is the only way for both of them to rest fully, but there is blessedly little work to do during the day, once the morning rush is over and before the evening comes. Soon enough, they settle into a rhythm, finishing up their daytime work quickly enough and taking lunch with them to eat as they wander the town. Mordred ventures that with a job like this, it wouldn't hurt to stay for a while and save some money, and Ise agrees easily.

A week stretches into two, then three, then five, and two months pass without incident before the first licks of an autumn breeze begin winding their way through the streets. Mordred keeps the main fire burning during the day, to keep the warmth up, and in the evenings they have more to do than ever, but the mornings at least grow a little quieter. Jin remarks, late in the season, that one of the tables has a crooked leg and needs replacing, and casually says they can take it, if they want. Mordred helps Ise half-drag, half-carry the table upstairs and set it against one wall. The day after, while they're admiring the work on display outside a forge, Ise asks Mordred if he minds staying over the winter.

"Only there would be no sense to leaving now," she points out, "when we have free board and the weather is about to turn, and we'd be travelling alone."

"Yes," Mordred agrees, "we should stay." He glances up at the grey sky, thick with clouds, and imagines the walls of the warm inn as a shield to keep out the dark.

By midwinter, they have earned a pair of wobbly stools, which Ise straightens out after a few days, and two sturdy wooden crates that serve well as storage and as end-tables for the beds. Mordred has gotten new clothes, carefully sized to last him longer. His blue cloak barely reaches his knees. Without the weight of the trees keeping him in, he has finally started to grow.

A storm passes overhead not three days after the longest night, and Mordred seizes in fear. But they are in strong buildings, and have well-lit fires, and the bone-chilling sleet and icy hail clear after a week to leave Engerd the same as it ever was, save perhaps a little more damp. Mordred replaces his sewing supplies, his own brittle with age and use, and darns the weak spots in their clothes and blankets so they will not form holes. Ise buys herself a stock of soft carving-wood and spends the quiet afternoons making models. They line the edge of the table, the brown wood a soft gold in the firelight: a tree, a rabbit, a raven-skull, a young girl with her hands reaching towards the sky.


	10. Acceptance

The thaw comes, as it always does. Ise gifts Mordred a token of dyed wood with fourteen elegant notches cut into it, space for scores more still. He buys himself a new strip of leather cord, his old one worn thin by the years, and strings the birth-count token alongside his first charm, for invisibility, then adds the charm he had made for serenity. The three lay flat and easy under his shirt.

The days pass quickly, fire-warmth giving way to the gentle caress of the sun without complaint, and they start to go out again in the afternoons, once the cleaning is done. It's always done quickly. Jin had spotted a glow at Mordred's fingers once as he scrubbed a pan, and remarked only that it must be a gift to be able to cut through the grease. Magic, unfettered by danger, can make easy work of mundane things.

Some days, when he has plenty of time, he takes his sword with him and practices a little, on a patch of unused ground past a field where the ground is packed and flat. Even after all this time, the blade is still as perfect as ever, a balance of spellwork. He doesn't practice often, though. Handling a sword makes a pit of guilt sink in his stomach, sick and curling. They had come, and he had fled. Hadn't even tried to fight back.

After he stows his sword under his bed to keep from looking at it, Ise pulls him aside. "What's wrong?"

The words are heavy and cumbersome in his mouth. "Should be have stayed? Tried to fight, tried to help?"

Her face softens. "Mordred... you would've died."

"I could have warned the others. Not just you."

"And gotten left behind yourself." She takes his hand between two of her own. "Mordred. You are not to blame for them."

On a warm day not long after, they clean and air the room, letting a breeze in through the open window to take away the stale warmth of winter. Ise rearranges the furniture a little, adds a few more crates for storage, and when they're done the room seems more comfortable than before, tidier and cleaner and yet more lived-in. Mordred calls every invocation he knows to ask all the Gods that would listen to bless the space, keep them warm and safe and happy and strong and well. He prays to the Silver Goddess last, asking for peace, asking her to keep them as her own.

"Do you really believe in the Goddess?" Ise asks, that evening, once dinner is done.

The question stumps Mordred for a moment. It's as though she asked whether he believed in breathing. "Yes. With all my heart."

"Do you believe she listens to us?"

Another pause. "I think she listens. I think we can only hope she answers."

On the day that would be Imbolc if he were anywhere but here, Mordred brings home a bundle of wildflowers, traces the braid of valley-grass wound about the handle of his dagger, and thinks of Kara. Kara, to the west. Kara, in their tent. Kara, in the dark without Mordred to pull her out under the sky and bring her flowers on her anniversary to braid into her hair. _I am sorry,_ he prays, that night, once Ise is already asleep. _I had to go somewhere different to you._

In late spring, Mordred stumbles across the town's stables and is enchanted by the horses in their stalls. The stablegirl, Emma, a redhead Mordred's age, allows him to hang around as long as he doesn't get in the way. One of the mares dips her head gently to butt against his shoulder, and abruptly, he thinks of Drút, nudging her snout into his chest. He goes before Emma can see him crying.

He returns the next day with carrots pilfered from lunch, and feeds them to the affectionate bay mare: Glenside, Emma tells him.

Over the next week, Mordred negotiates a deal with the stablemaster: one ride a week in exchange for two afternoons' work. He learns how to tack a horse and mix feed and stuff haynets and speed through collecting waste. It is worth it, for the way Glenside whickers happily when he approaches, for the way the wind moves in his hair as they canter down the road between stone-walled fields in the afternoon sun.

She reminds him so much of Drút.

He wonders about going back all through the weeks after, as the gentle-warmth of spring gives way to the true heat of summer. The bag of coins in their room has grown heavy with their pay, but Ise has said nothing of leaving, bought no travelling supplies, and Mordred does not yet want to depart. Unseen, this town has shifted something in him, given him some love of wood and stone and sturdy things he had not known before, and when he thinks of the cave and the valley and the endless, silent mountains, the spark of instinctual joy is accompanied by something else, wistful and quiet. The desire for travelling musicians. For the pleasant din of a tavern-evening, the bustle of a friendly marketsquare. The valley knows how to love the endless green of the trees, but Mordred loves best the silver of glittering moonlight in a clear sky. Nostalgia tugs on his hand like an old friend, pulls his heart ever and ever to the mountains, but he is longing for a nameless thing, for a place he cannot now love the way he once did. This is what growing up is, he muses. To receive a gift with both hands and treasure it so deeply he has not realised what it has taken until it was already gone. He cannot go back. He cannot go home.

Slowly, belonging settles, a constant embrace around his shoulders. He knows market-vendors by name, can give directions to the best smithy or supply-shop, gets to know Emma and her parents, sees Glenside almost every day. The town adapts easily to a Druid-boy with magic, and he makes friends, here and there, Jan and Erra and Iric, folk he sees and speaks to often, and sometimes makes a show of silver sparks or glimmer glow for entertainment.

Their shared room gains life in strides, flowers coming to decorate every nook and cranny. Ise begs a few ancient tankards from Jin and Mordred fills them with soil, and soon they have herbs growing in an untidy line along the small windowsill, sweet and fragrant. Basil crowds alongside mint, sage and cooking-herbs nestled together and reaching for the sun. In the evenings Mordred drifts off to the hum of chatter coming up through the floor, and wonders how he ever fell asleep in silence.

A week after summer has arrived in true showing, a thunderstorm passes overhead. The noise no longer bothers Ise, so Mordred shifts their errant plant-pots onto the table and hangs out the window to watch. In the distance, cracks of brilliant silver arc across the sky, and Mordred thinks the Goddess must be weeping, to bleed so much light down to the unremarkable earth.

Midsummer is a decorative affair, with ribbons strung from every balcony, flowers hung at every doorway. In the evening there is singing and eating and swapping stories around the great central fire into the long hours of dusk. At some point, Ise spins into a dance, skirts swirling in elegant grace about her, and against the dusty orange sky, the bright flame of the fire paints delicate patterns over everything: the harmony of footsteps hammers out a steady rhythm into the empty air, a rallying-cry, a war-drum for nobody. From a place near the edge of the dancers, Emma spots Mordred sitting alone and pulls him up into a directionless spin, watching the rising fire-sparks drift unconcernedly into the sky.

Ise comes down at the latter end of breakfast this morning, and Mordred catches her gaze. "I want to stay."

She smiles, and it does not look so hungry as it once did. "Me too, kid."

That night he falls asleep and wakes riding Glenside. He is dressed not in day-clothes but chainmail, and beside him, Emrys rides just as comfortably on a smaller horse with a dappled grey-and-white coat. They pass in companionable silence through an endless array of golden-green tress, along a forest road Mordred knows must be leading them home.

Summer ages gracefully into early autumn, the trees that line Engerd's central square turning soft yellow and sun-gold and deep red in turn. Wind sweeps the streets endlessly, disturbing the fallen leaves. Harvest season begins in earnest, and Mordred finds them both a little extra work in bringing in pumpkins, a coin between them for each afternoon's work. It takes two weeks, and on the last night Mordred dreams of a flock of village-boys running laps around a ragged scarecrow in a field under the sky. Emma starts coming to the tavern on her free evenings, and Mordred shares with her the scraps and crusts and offcuts that he and Ise sneak for snacks will cooking. When he retires to his room midway through the dinner-hours, she joins him, and they stay up chattering together about harvest and the weather and the horses in the stables until Ise comes up and Emma departs with a smile. It's nice, Mordred thinks, to have friends.

The air turns from crisp to chill, and the days shorten, and Mordred grows a little quieter. Less warmth to spare now, when they are fire-heated alone and he must feed the hearth wood every hour just to keep it alight. Even in the town, it is bitterly cold, and he dare not venture onto the icy streets to see his friends.

On the day he best guesses is his anniversary, Mordred carves a new notch, small and neat, into the wood-charm Ise had gifted him the year before, then slips out of the tavern before sunrise to walk out of the town. It takes a bare few minutes to reach the fields, still buried under a thick blanket of snow. Wistfully, he draws a small Druid swirl into the white powder.

The snows stay, heavy and insistent, even as winter gives way to a drowsy, dreich spring. The light that casts in through their window is dim, but where it reflects on the fields still coated liberally in ice, they glow in sunrise gold. Mordred imagines he can still see blades of grass, held under a sheet of suspended sunlight. For almost two weeks, the chill persists, the ground frozen and crackling underfoot. Finally, however, it abates: the air warms, the ever-present snow turns to speckling rain, and the grass shows through again. The day all the snow is gone from the fields, the townsfolk throw an impromptu street party: the long, dark freeze of winter is over, and planting season can begin.

Ise's cheer, which had dulled over the long cold months, returns in force along with the heat. She whistles as she works, and the day after the party they go to the marketplace and buy a candy-sweet each, then perch on one of the low stone walls that ring the square while they eat. Ise nudges his ribs gently with her elbow as Emma emerges from a house across the street and heads in the direction of the stables.

"She's very pretty," Ise says conversationally, licking her fingers.

"That is true," Mordred allows, neutrally.

"And your age, as well."

"I am not interested in her, Ise," he objects, voice light. "She is my friend."

She grins. "I never said you were. Just commenting." After a moment, she asks, carefully, "Are you sweet of heart?"

Mordred thinks about the boys of this town, of muck and dirt and roughhousing, of strength and spirit and honour. "In truth," he replies, very slowly, "I am heart-still, I think. Perhaps. There are more important things in life than... than matters of desire."

She relaxes. "I suppose so." Mordred checks his sleeves from crumbs. "What things, then? What's more important?"

_Isn't it obvious?_ "Home. Like this. And friends. Like you."

She wraps an arm around his shoulders and it occurs to him how similar they are in size, now. Before, she had always stood a head and shoulders above him, but he has grown fast, and now her arm drapes comfortable across him. He leans into her, just a little. Abruptly, he wonders if Kara is still taller than him. After a moment of deliberation, he decides he'll probably never outgrow her.

Planting season begins in earnest, and at night Mordred watches the sky: above, distant and ethereal, the brilliant galaxies in a swathe of deep blues and purples. Below and above the light, errant stars decorate the inky blackness like snow on dark soil. Delicate and lovely. Utterly untouchable. At the spring fest, he and Ise pray alone, but he knows it is alright. Engerd is a town rich in faith. Even if they are the only ones who name the Gods their makers and the Goddess their keeper, everyone here believes in something.

He dreams of a ride through a forest, wild and fast, cantering heedlessly down wipe open paths he knows so well., no chase or fear but joy and exhilaration in plenty. When, after ageless eternity, he finally comes to a stop, by a stream where Glenside dips her head to drink, another rider emerges from the trees, a few heartbeats behind him. Mordred knows Emrys without looking, can feel the twist and pull of the worldmagic about him, focused into alignment like constellations attending the north star.

Emma rearranges her working days and joins him for afternoon rides: she and her piebald mare Kikin accompany Mordred and Glenside out onto the roads. The world seems to come back to life as they go: mice scurry from nests built at the base of stone walls, and the family of owls that lives in the rafters of the stables hoot in contentment when they return. Squirrels scamper from tree to tree in the courtyard and once, when Mordred wakes well before dawn and goes for a walk, he spies a group of deer on the main road. They notice him, and stay for a moment, then turn and bound off the stone and packed dirt, towards the nearby copse of dark, welcoming trees.

When summer comes, it comes blazingly hot. At first, the evening hour provides a respite from the immense heat, but as the days draw on the sun stays later and later in the sky, and silent watcher over the packed fields of sprouting greens that have flourished in the bright light. The summer harvest comes early, and straw-brimmed hats fill the town: Emma teaches Mordred how to weave his own to keep the sun off. While he threads the straw, she cuts his hair, which now hangs long where it is tied at the back of his neck. She cuts it just short enough that he can hold it out of his face, then sets to putting in tight, neat braids tied with string and then bound into a bundle with both Mordred and Ise's prayer cloths. Blue and green against black. Emma's own hair is curly, too, but in loose, uneven rings, typical of her auburn hair, and she delights in his tight curls as she goes. Once she's done, they head to market, and Emma manages to trade her apple and sandwich for a small meat-pie which they split and share, laughing and picking crumbs off their clothes as they move down a narrow street in the blissful shade of the buildings.

After almost two months of clear, achingly blue skies and blistering heat, midsummer arrives with a strafe of dark, heavy clouds over the horizon. Mordred dances with Emma around the fire, sends a show of dancing silver sparks upwards to a cheer, sings out-of-tune songs at the top of his lungs, and falls into bed still caught up in the brilliant revelry of joy and freedom and being utterly alive.

The next morning, a heavy front of clouds has blacked out the sky, and Ise decides to go for a walk. The rain starts just as Mordred has finished up the last of the dishes, and as he returns the stack of plates to their place in the corner, he hears the distant rumble of thunder.

Pulling on his cloak, he departs for the stables, thinking of Emma trying to calm the no-doubt frightened horses. An arc of lightning comes down a few miles outside the town, and another crash of thunder sounds, louder this time. He turns the corner onto the square at which the stables sit, and another brilliant spit of lightning splits the sky. Tears of the Goddess, he thinks.

This time, the thunder is ominously loud, and he hears above the sounds of the rain a frightened whinnying, high-pitched and desperate. Across the square he sees a pale bay he recognises as a rowdy and ill-tempered stallion wheeling in distressed circles, Emma clutching frantically at the halter. The bay rears, then drops, and Emma stumbles and falls onto wet stones as it yanks its head away and canters towards Mordred, metal horseshoes clattering on stone. He stumbles back in sudden terror and falls, tearing his cloak, as it skids to a halt in front of him, rearing wildly. He throws an arm across his face and screams.

There is nothing.


	11. Departure

After a long, long moment of held breath, he drops the arm from his face.

The bay lies before him, unmoving on the cold stone. A stripe of awful silver divides its neck in two like a strange scar, and Mordred's fingers prickle with the weight of a spell cast without thought or will.

Across the square, Emma stares at him, horror plain to see on her face. He stands, slowly, his cloak in tatters, and sees the other townsfolk in the square lifewise horrified.

He pulls up his hood, fingers burning with unspent silver, and goes home.

Ise's bag, hanging on the door. His waterskin on the box beside her bed. His blanket on the mattress. Her carving-knives on the table. Rows of cooking-herbs by the windowsill. Their bag of coins, sitting on the table. She had counted it again before midsummer. They had near enough six-score of coins, then. Half of them his. Thunder rolls outside, and he thinks of Emma's face as the room lights up painfully bright in flashes of lightning.

Deciding what he has to do is bitterly easy.

Ise swaps his small bag for her large traveller's knapsack, and buys him a small set of belt-pouches into which he packs his sewing supplies. He keeps his own waterskin, and his blanket and bedroll, but Ise ties her cloak about his shoulders. Her green prayer-cloth is still tied in his hair alongside his own.

Buying Glenside costs fifteen coins, and her tack and saddlebags another five. Emma fits the bridle with unshed tears in her eyes. The tent takes ten coins more, and he packs it into the saddlebags with a dull grief in his chest. Then, it's just a matter of selling what he no longer needs. His spare shirt. His old boots. His crates, and other supplies that he will not need or cannot carry with him. He packs his blanket and bedroll, a small coil of rope that had been a gift, a few spare candles and a flint. Tucked carefully into the back pocket is a writing-pen he bought at market last autumn, and ink to go with it. At his belt sits his dagger and his sword. His warm coat is tucked into Glenside's saddlebags, and Ise's cloak feels light on his shoulders, white flowers he had embroidered years ago still splayed across the hem.

His last night in Engerd, he dreams of a red sky, arced across with spats of light. Smuts of dark cloud choke the edges of his vision, and he wakes with tears in his eyes before dawn.

Jin cooks him breakfast. Emma brings him a pastry, bought yesterday at the bakery, and Glenside. Ise does not say goodbye.

He rides on the west road out of Engerd, shadow cast before him by the rising sun.

He reaches the main road by evening, and pitches his tent while Glenside sets to grazing. Absently, he fingers the year-charm around his neck, the one Ise had cut for him. Ise, who he has now left behind. Left behind, like Kara in her uneasy rest without her brother, and Emshir with her cairn of stones not even marked with her name. Left behind, like those who slept in the cave in the mountains, or the graveyard of the forest-settlement in Camelot.

Mordred buries his head in his hands and weeps.

"I'm sorry, Mordred."

Emrys lays a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Mordred does not turn to look at him. He keeps his eyes fixed on the brilliant white snow at their feet. It continues on, as far as he can see, in every direction. _What do you have to apologise for?_

"Condolence, not apology. I know... it is never easy to lose a friend."

_She has not died._

"But you have lost her all the same."

Mordred rubs at his eyes, flicking away his tears before they can freeze. _She was more than my friend. She was- She is-_

"I know."

After a moment, Mordred takes a deep breath. _Where are we?_

"I don't know."

Mordred looks out across the world in front of them: endless swathes of ice and snow, and in the distance, the line of dark mountains at the horizon.

"It is beautiful, though."

He thinks of fields of ice all the while as he begins to ride. It's odd, retracing the steps he and Ise took when they fled this way. Where they had been cold and hungry and tired, he is warm and well-fed and strong. He leads Glenside much of the way, appreciating the pleasant ache in his legs of long days walking. When he reaches Ealdor again, he trades a caught rabbit for some bread, and gives Hunith a few coins to thank her for her kindnesses years ago. She thanks him, profusely. He does not stay the night.

By the time he reaches the junction where the road splits east and west, autumn is truly upon him, and a new chill settles in the air. As he goes, he gathers small branches from the side of the road to light fires in the evenings, for his own warmth and for Glenside. She is resilient, as he had hoped, and holding out well against their long solitude. Mordred talks to her as they go, to hear his voice, remind himself he is not the only person in the world. Out here, it can feel that way.

The road-junction, when he reaches it, is surrounded by a friendly scattering of trees, and he camps for three nights, eager for the presence of living things and the change to dig for wild vegetables. On the third night, he is joined by a caravan: twelve people, seven men and five women, with four large wagons pulled by eight horses. The youngest of them, a boy Mordred guesses at twenty years, greets him as they settle nearby. After a brief conversation with the boy, Finneas, he joins them at their fire, trying to take in a flurry of names as he does - Ella, Kit, Renn, Wisteria, a pair of twins called Ann and Anna. More names he doesn't catch so clearly. He eats smoke-dried rabbit and talks about himself, and when he mentions his swordplay, one of the men - Jac? - looks intrigued.

"So, you're a fighter, then?"

"For my part."

"We had a fighter with us, before," Jac continues, "but the bastard ditched us a week back to head south, and the road to the mountains is riddled with vermin." He pauses, looks Mordred up and down. "You'd be a help to have with us. Even the sight of a sword and someone decent to wield it puts off most bandits. We can't pay you, but we've food and company and firewood now it's getting colder."

"We're headed west, to the mountains of Andor," puts in a woman, Helen. "There's a town called Effeld, at the near end. We'll sell these things, then take another round of supplies north through the vale: there's a little village at the old ruined castle. Gem mines."

Mordred thinks of company, and work, and a new range of mountains, and says, "I would be delighted to join you."

Autumn drifts on into winter as they move west. The road is poorly-kept, a little treacherous, and when they pass the waymarker into Camelot Mordred shivers and fingers the invisibility-charm inside his cloak-pocket. Once, he catches sight of a man he can only guess is a bandit - armed, and dressed in concealing clothes - disappear behind an outcropping. He warns Wisteria, who leads the column, and the group falls in quickly, to make raiding them a heavy task. Mordred moves to the head of the caravan and draws his sword, but it seems Jac was right about the sight of a weapon: they are not attacked.

They round the last outcropping of rocks and spy a collection of stone houses clustered at the base of the mountain foothills a few days after the first snows set in. Mordred breathes a sigh of relief, and as one they move with renewed vigour up the last stretch of hill and into the town.

Once their goods are sold and coin collected, the wagons convert easily into small living-spaces, the wooden structures a careful defence against the cold. Mordred finds a spot on the floor to lay his bedroll, and privately thanks the Goddess he does not have to pitch his tent in the snow. While they wait for the weather to abate so they can go on through the vale, he buys a pair of rabbit-fur gloves to keep the chill off his fingers: the winter is bitterly cold, here, near the north line of the claimed lands, bordering the edges of the wilds.

He thinks of Engerd, to the southeast, warm and safe and open. Looks north and the sees the path to a distant village, the ragged line of the mountains, the roads into the unbound and unknown, and knows exactly where he is meant to be.

They depart once the blizzard-season is passed, and Jac tells Mordred it is two weeks to the nameless mining-village at the foot of the ruined castle. One the same morning that Wisteria steers the reloaded caravan northeast, two of the men whom Mordred had not much spoken with depart westwards with one of the horses. Mordred carves a new dash into his wood-charm to mark the day he had missed some weeks back, and asks about the men to keep from thinking about Ise.

"They're headed to the city," Wisteria explains. "Always were. Just waiting for the snows to clear. But now, would you mind hitching up your girl to the cart, seeing as they took one of our rides with them?"

Mordred glances across to where Jac and Ann are helping pull the wagon that now lacks one of its horses. "If I get paid the same as the rest of you. Glenside is the best thing in my life: she's worth a lot to me."

"Agreed," says Wisteria easily. Glenside hitches without complaint, and he feeds her a carrot from the bundle he bought in town. He stays alongside that cart, then, talking to Ella, a sturdy woman in her late thirties with sun-spackled tan skin and long black braids. Glenside takes well to wagon-tack, though, and Mordred's worry for her strength abates quickly.

The trip through the vale is thankfully uneventful, and the emerge from the other side at the base of a long, shallow climb, at the top of which Mordred can see the crumbling castle-ruin. From this distance, he cannot see the houses of the village, but the fortress calls like a beacon across the fields of white. Half-abandoned towers reach spindly rooftops towards the sky, stooped and distressed with age and the weight of the clouds.

A day after emerging from the cliffside road, Mordred spots a man in white furs behind a snowdrift to their left. He drifts casually over to Wisteria and warns her to be ready with the spears that are tucked under each wagon, even as he checks his own sword. The order goes out in a quiet ripple, and when a half-hour later, six raiders burst from the trees brandishing throwing-axes and targe shields, the polearms are out within seconds. Only one man makes it to the group before Mordred catches him and cuts a fierce blow into his neck. Across the group, Ann and Anna shout filth at another raider and he smiles in grim satisfaction. The man before him collapses, shudders, and does not move again. Mordred turns and ducks past the grey stallion beside him to cut down the man harrying Jac: the other four break in uneven lines back into the endless, plaintive white.

Carefully, he wipes the red from his blade with his scarf, and sheathes it. His gloves are blood-spattered, but they are safe and alive and nobody is hurt. A quick check of Glenside reveals her anxious but unharmed, and he soothes himself for a moment with the feel of her coat under his hands.

They pull into the village, which Ella affectionately nicknames Gemton, some hours after noon the next day. In the sky above, the watery sun is still weak and diluted, but there is light enough to haul and sell their goods. Then, wagons empty and purses full, they retire to the village's small inn.

In the morning, he spends a few minutes stretching the stiffness out his muscles, then goes to help with the loading. They have a heavy shipment of uncut stones for delivery all across the north of Camelot. The work is done by mid-afternoon, and Mordred takes the opportunity to mount up Glenside for the first time in weeks and ride up to the raised embankment upon which the old ruin sits. Glenside herself is sprightly and cheerful, happy to be moving normally again after the slow, dreary work of cart-hauling. Soon enough, he finds the way in - a stone archway, tall and smooth, probably impressive before some of the stones on the right wall crumbled away.

Inside, the flagstones have been overgrown by grass which reclaims the courtyard: a fountain sits in the centre, abandoned, though a quick glance reveals it full of snowmelt water and pond scum. On the inside of the basin are carved stone icons, worn away by the years. A frog hops from the pool, croaking indignantly, when he tries to look closer. Around them, age-wearied walls rise, dark and imposing. He dismounts and ties Glenside to a post that looks strong still, and spends a few minutes working the bloodstains from his clothes with magic. Then, he starts for a set of double doors at the top of a flight of stone steps that creak miserably when he pushes them open.

Directly before him is another set of double doors, these well-preserved and imposing. Captivated, he traces the delicate flower-symbol in the wrought iron of the handles. Still here, after all this time. Opening them he steps through.

The hall is long, rectangular, stone-paved. High windows rise on either side in neatly ordered rows, but below them, shattered glass in a rainbow of colours decorates the floor. Climbing-vines wind their way through the gaps in the stone and up around the rafters: above, the ceiling is patchy where slates have given way. At the head of the room, the throne is fallen on its side, cracked and faded, blanketed in drifted snow. The braziers are rusted, and the room is dark under the clouded sky. He turns on his heel and leaves.

His back is pressed against a stone wall and chainmail weighs heavy on his shoulders. A crack of light enters the cell from a narrow window set high in the wall. He can feel Kara reaching for his mind, a desperate fear calling through this imprisonment, and he buries his face in his hands and weeps. She falls, and falls, and falls, and he does nothing to save her. Does nothing at all.

They leave for Effeld under the first spring sun. By the time they have made their silent journey back to the town, settled comfortably at the foot of the mountains, Glenside is eating well again, grass showing through what stubborn snow remains. They sell a little of their stock in Effeld, buy provisions for the road, and then begin the journey west.

For a month, they travel unimpeded, stopping intermittently at towns and villages they pass along the way. Sometimes, a local smithy or craftsperson buys a bundle of stones for their work: other times, a lone villager peruses the selection and picks only one, a gift for a loved one or a trinket decoration. Regardless, the coin means they eat well and occasionally stay in taverns, three or four to a room. Mordred keeps his sword sharp and clean, keeps his eyes on the road, keeps his cloak pulled tight about his shoulders. It is late spring when they reach Amria, the large town situated at the junction where the road turns south to the city. To the northwest, he can see the very crest of what must be a great stone tower in the distance. The Fortress of Idirsholas, Renn informs him. Not a good place to go.

As they move south, the weather warms, spring shifting into early summer with good grace. They pass into the woods are attacked twice more by raiding parties, twice more fending them off. They make it through with scrapes and bruises only, and Finneas thanks Mordred later with quiet sincerity: a bandit had stood above him before Mordred had caught the man in the back with his sword and sent him sprawling and twitching to the forest floor.

By the time they break free of the treeline, midsummer is approaching fast, and Mordred realises he has missed Imbolc by a long way. Too late now. He thinks of his dream, a cold stone cell and Kara falling, and wonders if he can really call himself her brother anymore, when he walks willingly towards the city, unashamed and unhurried. At night, he dreams of flashes of gold, lightning in a red sky, a dragon on his cloak and a dark-haired boy by his side.

They reach the city late in the evening, the day after the solstice. Mordred drinks half a pint of ale and feels thoroughly ill then falls asleep on his small, rickety bed in the tavern, sword laid stubbornly at his side.

He shadows Ella for the next two weeks as they move through the Upper Town, selling their goods. The bartering over price is easy, relaxed negotiation, Ella clearly familiar with these people, and never one does he go to draw his sword. One evening, near the end of the second week, they finish early, and he takes Glenside out of the city and into the openness of the farmland, under the soft orange light of the setting sun. When, after hours of gentle trotting, they turn back, he looks up at the gold and pink clouds streaked across the sky, and thinks of Emrys.

They spend another week in Camelot after the selling is done, and Mordred helps reload the carts with blankets and clothes, capes and bags, waterskins and buckets and barrels. A single blown-glass vase is packed in among a host of pale lavender cloaks in soft wool.

They depart early in the morning, heading on the north road out of the citadel. Mordred thinks of Emrys and his Pendragon, behind him in the castle. But then he thinks of the northern plains, of ice and snow, a place without rules or boundaries or limit, a place with light and life and magic. Smiling, he walks a little faster.


	12. Journey

A patrol catches up to them just as they're entering the woods, and they pass the trek through the forest accompanied by soldiers on horseback, the sight of which is evidently enough to ward off any bandits. Through the day, Mordred absently fingers the grass-weave on his dagger, thinking of Kara and mountain caves, the cool rain of spring and the damp chill of autumn. It is hot, still, though the leaves above them do a little to keep off the worst of the sun. They emerge from the woods to find the peak of summer come and gone: as Mordred steps beyond the treeline, he feels the first whisper of a cool breeze brushing inquisitively at his clothes, and smiles.

The cold persists as they move north towards Amria, and clouds set in thick and heavy, a new damp in the air. Rain comes soon after, dull and unrelenting, and the last week of their travel to the town is made through sloshing mud and filth. Everything he wears and owns is covered in filth: in the quagmires they are traipsing through, nothing stays clean. They arrive in the town wearied and filthy, and in a fit of madness, Mordred pulls Ann and Anna down to the nearby river the first evening, where he shucks his clothes down to his undergarments and splashes in the river just for the sake of getting his hair and skin clean. That night, he uses a little magic to pull the dirt from his clothes while he rebraids his hair, grown out as it is from when Emma had done it months ago.

Business is good despite the downpour, and perhaps thanks to the weather, they part with a goodly number of blankets and clothes, as well as some of their delicate things. When they depart a few days later, the carts are significantly lighter, and in combination with better-kept stone roads, their speed picks up significantly. Where the journey from Effeld to Amria had taken near enough two months, the return trip is a bare six weeks, delayed only by their stops in outer villages to shift practical wares, barrels and buckets and things harder to find in remote places.

By the time they reach Effeld once more, their stocks are all but gone, and the snows are setting in. They pitch camp on the outskirts again, and on the second night, Wisteria calls a general meeting over the evening meal in the tavern. She unrolls a map and lays it across the table.

"We have two options," she begins, gesturing at the small dot that marks Effeld on the map. "Either we go back to the castle village, pick up stones, and head back along the same route again..."

"Which is, by the way, the safest plan," puts in Jac, sounding irritable. He takes a drink, and sets his mug down with a clatter. Mordred winces.

"Opinion noted, Jac," Wisteria says forcefully, fixing him with a stare. "Or, we head east from the ruined castle, and move up into Mercia. Stop first at the castle past the vale of Denaria, and then head for the border. It's on smaller roads, but there's supposed to be good money to be had in Mercia, especially for rarities from Camelot lands."

"Supposed to be," notes Ella, doubtfully. "There's also supposed to be plenty of bandits and raiders, no?"

"That's what Mordred's for," Helen interjects, nodding towards him. "And besides, we've always handled ourselves before. What's to say Mercia will be any different? I say give it a try."

Wisteria smiles. "Thank you, Helen." After a moment, she sighs. "Alright. Put it to a vote. Those in favour of going back through Camelot?"

Jac, Ann and Kit raise their hands. After a moment, Anna hesitantly puts hers up as well. Wisteria clears her throat. "Those in favour of heading to Mercia?"

Her own hand goes up, followed immediately by Helen and Renn, then Finneas, Ella, Jonathan and Mordred.

Over the next few days, Mordred steps lightly around camp, keeping half an eye on Jac, who takes to muttering to himself, grumbling at no-one in particular. In the meantime, Mordred practices most every spare hour, and, when she requests it, gives Ella some basic points on the use of a spear. The true cold of winter sets in quickly, and he adds the second coat he had bought in the city to his clothes, spreading the horse-blanket he had bought at the same time over Glenside, much to her pleasure. On a particularly cold day, he takes his dagger and carefully trims her mane shorter, to keep it from catching moisture and freezing.

They spend the winter solstice huddled around a large campfire, eating cooked meat and talking quietly. That night, Mordred stares up at the mountains above them, impassable and dark and utterly wild. The brightness of the moon and stars carpets them, illuminating grey slopes in awesome light.

Two weeks later, a blizzard sets in, and together with Ann and Anna, Mordred spends five days tucked into a tiny room in the inn, swapping out the bed. He keeps Glenside stabled until the snows abate, and on the last night, Mordred falls asleep on his bedroll with both coats wrapped tightly around him, and dreams of the white city.

Moonlight on a stone floor, the flickering light of an almost burnt-out candle, and the gentle creak of wooden doors. He is awake in a bed with pale sheets, the room just big enough to hold a cupboard and a chair, and at the foot of the bed sits his rucksack, still packed with his things. The door creaks open, then closed again.

"Can't sleep either?"

_No_ , he confesses. _Though I do not think I could live with myself, if I could._

"Neither could I. I would not want to be the kind of person who could sleep well on the same night their friend has died."

After a moment, he stands, and pulls on his boots. _Come on. There's... there's no point in staying here. Not anymore._

He carves a new notch in his year-charm on his anniversary, and it's announced that they're leaving again for Gemton a week later, sans a wagon: Wisteria had sold a cart and onen of the horses, Kio, to one of the folk in the town. Eleven people defending three carts makes better odds, which they will need in Mercia, she explains.

Once she's done, she takes Mordred aside and asks if he can ride Glenside at the head of the caravan while they go. He agrees easily, and when she requests, pulls on his gear and mounts up with his sword where it is easily accessible. She circles him, and he tries to sit up a little straighter, hold himself a little prouder. He feels oddly judged, in a way he never has before. Glenside stands with her head raised to attention, and he gives her a pat on the neck. Eventually, Wisteria seems satisfied. She departs after asking him to neaten up his saddle and blankets if he can, to make him look more experienced, and to lose the cloak.

He sells Ise's cloak the morning they leave, for two coins. A tight bitterness clamps down on his heart, but coats serve his needs better and he has no need for new scarves. He rides out of the town at the head of column, mounted tall and stately on his well-groomed dark bay, wrapped in a uniformly clean grey fur-skin coat and dark red scarves, and he feels like a Knight.

The trip to Gemton is thankfully uneventful. They pass through the vale road and reach the town without delay, and load up quickly, a smaller quantity of finer gems now they have less carts in which to carry them. Wisteria spends a few hours consulting her map and local folks, who give her advice on the best route to the still-occupied castle to the northeast. They ride out the next morning and Mordred does not visit the ruined castle. The night before, he had dreamed of an abandoned courtyard, of a snowdrifted hall and shattered windows and a forgotten throne. He is out, now, among the snow and the ice, the freedom of the wild places, and it feels like home.

The roads they pass along now are smaller, more disused. Mordred takes care to watch where Glenside is stepping, and pick her hooves at the end of each day for errant stones. Slowly, the hills draw nearer, and after a week of travel the edges of a castle come into view, disguised by snow and surrounded by pine trees. That night, Mordred prays to the Green Lady, goddess of the wilds, before he sleeps, and thanks her for the sun and the sky and the air, for the great and distant beauty of open places.

The next day, they're halted in mid-morning by two men in heavy furs and armour who look Mordred up and down and then glance back and forth along the caravan. "What's your business at the castle?" the larger one grunts, and abruptly Mordred feels all eyes turn to him.

"Goods from the southwest," he says, and to his pride his voice doesn't wobble even a little. "We're here to sell and trade, and depart east for Mercia in the morning."

The smaller one mutters under his breath to the larger one, who turns back to Mordred. "Get along, then." Mordred gives him a polite nod, left hand settled on the hilt of his sword where it sits at his hip, and nudges Glenside into a walk.

They round a small bend not a half-hour later, and the castle looms before them. Dark stone matches the grey of the hills, and wrought-iron braziers flank the central archway, where a portcullis is raised above the entrance to the courtyard. Wisteria nods forwards, and he moves resolutely on, taking care to sit as upright as possible. A subtle adjustment of the reins pulls Glenside's head up, and they draw into the stone-paved yard the very picture of a caravan led by a mounted soldier.

He holds a brief discussion with the yardmaster who greets them, relying mostly on guesswork and instinct, and quickly enough a few people come to examine their wares. Jac and Renn negotiate the trades, and Mordred takes care to stick near the rest of them: the men of this place are leery, and set him on edge. Almost to a man they are armed and armoured, decorated with battle-scars, loud and unwashed and without any manners he can see. He sleeps against Glenside's flank, grass-hilted dagger in his hand.

He wakes early, an uncomfortable crick in his neck, still slumped against Glenside. It is not long before dawn, and the rest of the group seem fine, so he takes a lap around the couryard to stretch the tension out of his muscles, keep a careful hand at the hilt of his sword, though the courtyard is deserted at this hour.

By the time the rest have awoken and gotten ready to leave, he has repacked his own things out of the carts and into Glenside's saddlebags, and stored a little food in his rucksack so he doesn't need to go digging through the wagons if he grows hungry on the road. They depart through the east gate, and Mordred stops Glenside at the bend in the path to ensure everyone comes past unharried, before he gives her a gentle kick to turn back onto the road.

The snows melt as they move east, spring arriving proper and true. Mordred picks a bundle of snowdrops from the side of the road when they stop one evening, and tucks them into the front of his saddle, trying not to think of a cell and a hangman's noose in a white stone courtyard.

They meet the border road a week after departing from the castle. By then, spring's warmth has arrived properly, and snow lies only in the sheltered hollows and not on the plains. This far north, it seems, nothing ever truly forgets how to freeze. The road at least is wide and flat and well maintained, and they pick up speed, moving with renewed vigour. They pass a few small towns and villages on the way to the lands that are Mercia proper, and shift some goods here and there. By the time they arrive at the town on the junction that leads up towards the capital, they are all of them road-weary and tired. They stay overnight, sell their goods in the morning and leave without learning its name. In the evenings, Kit and Anna take to grumbling about their altered route and the uninspiring results it has yielded thus far, until Wisteria fixes them with a look and they fall silent.

Soon after, though, they come upon a large town, Dreswick, with a healthy appetite for foreign goods. The coin-bag they bring back at the end of the second evening silences Jac and Kit's complaining, and Mordred spends their spare day brushing Glenside thoroughly, feeding her carrots as he goes. In playful mischievousness, she steps around once he is done, licking at his face, and he chuckles and wipes it off on her coat, rubbing at her neck affectionately.

Out of Dreswick, they continue northwest on the advisement of the local folk, on a road that will take them to the capital: with lighter wagons and lighter hearts by far, the group follow Mordred out of the town and towards the distant city. Soon, though, the weeks of travel across open plains begins to grate at him. He longs for the mountains, and at night, he dreams of jagged peaks and dark caves, valley-streams and the endless green of trees. In the mornings, he wonders whether he will ever find somewhere that feels right Out here, he feels stripped bare and exposed, aching with the long travel and bone-tired from constant watchfulness. But he continues, because he is here to be dangerous and when the time comes he must succeed.

The summer has waned halfway into autumn by the time they catch sigh of high stone walls across the horizon, dark and indistinct but undoubtedly the edges of the capital. Mordred breathes a sigh of relief, and pats Glenside on the side of her neck. She whickers, then pricks up her ears, glancing to one side of the road. Mordred follows her gaze, sword already part-drawn, and pulls her reins around to do a quick loop of the caravan, keeping his eyes open the whole time. Across the bare plains, though, he sees nothing.

Wisteria glances up as he returns. "Something?"

"I thought Glenside heard something, but I didn't see-"

A scream cuts him off, and he wheels to see Kit staggering, a sword protruding from his shoulder - behind, Mordred sees a group of five- eight- twelve- fifteen men emerge from behind a hidden rise, shouting and brandishing spears and swords and torches. Glenside rears, whinnying high and sharp, and he presses himself low to her neck and calls, "Get the spears!" Glenside comes down hard as a spear sails past, and he pulls her around and draws his sword - the nearest spear-thrower is far away, but a quick-footed raider is approaching fast. He kicks hard, Glenside bounds into a canter, and Mordred cuts down the bandit who had been going for Renn and Ann. A spray of bright blood splashes him as he turns for the next, a man with a two handed-sword that catches in its scabbard and leaves him helpless as Glenside scrabbles to a stop, neighing wildly, and kicks out hard at his head. A bright crack resounds in the empty air and suddenly Mordred is screaming in a town square with a stallion rearing above him. Behind him, Jac lets out a shrill cry. In blind panic, Mordred pulls Glenside around to the north, digs in his heels, and flees.


	13. Concealment

He comes back to himself with numb fingers still frozen from fear and shock, his sword clutched loosely in his hand. Ahead, the capital still looms, large and indistinct: the road here is deserted, and Glenside has slowed to an unhappy walk. After a moment, he persuades his muscles to relax, and dismounts, sheathing his sword. Above the sun is setting: behind him, there are footprints and hoofprints alike in the mud of the road, which he banishes with a quick working. He does not want to be found.

They retreat to a copse of trees a short distance from the road, and by the time they have reached it, the sun is fully down. Mordred ties Glenside on a loose rein to a young birch, then lays his bedroll a short distance away and settles down. It's a long time before sleep claims him.

He wakes late the next morning, stiff and sore and cold. He moves on automatic, resettling Glenside's tack and repacking the saddlebags and knapsack, noting with dismay his measly supply of food and coin. Without raising his eyes from the ground, he unties Glenside's reins and leads her back towards the road.

It takes three more days of riding, Mordred constantly on edge, before he reahes the city. By then, the first hints of winter are arriving, but as soon as he passes through the gates he feels the warmth of braziers envelop him, and gives Glenside's neck a rub. "We made it, my lady," he murmurs, as he leads her through the streets. By now, finding good stables and cheap taverns in foreign towns is a practiced skill, and Mordred retires to a small room bone-tired but warm and with a truly full belly for the first time in months.

He stays in the same tavern as winter sets in, true and harsh. Quickly enough, he realises that many of the bars here are filled with gambling in the evenings, and he can cheat easily by stealing opponent's cards from the edges of their minds. Using his mindspeak so unnaturally after years without it feels like stretching a muscle he does not know how to use, and leaves him with persistent, dull headaches. Still, he needs to make money somehow. In the meantime, he yet stays warm and fed, and Glenside does too, even as the snows set themselves against the outer walls.

Not once does he wander beyond the lowest outskirts of the place. This is not his realm, and this is not his city, and he should not be here. But still, there is food and fire and company, so he contents himself with the knowledge that once the snows are gone he will be too, and stays.

On the evening of his anniversary, he buys himself three drinks and finishes all of them, then gambles without peeking at the edges of others' minds, and still wins. It's oddly refreshing. The next morning, he wakes with a dull hangover that still feels cleaner than the stretched-thin ache of forced mindspeak. The problem is, once he starts, he always wants _more_.

That evening, he goes down to the main room of the tavern where he's staying, and when the man across from him challenges him to a game of cards, he accepts. He has a six and a three and a horse that has not known the freedom of a long ride in months, and this man has a nine and an eight and a murdered wife he had dumped in a ditch two nights ago. Mordred finishes the game without losing his poise once, then follows the man out into the dark. They're two streets away before Mordred gains on him, shoves him against a wall, closes his eyes, and pushes into his mind.

It's delightfully easy to peruse his memories. A tailor, though not a skilled one. Countryborn originally, but he has been a city-dweller for years now and has beaten his wife for nearly as long. She'd died to a misjudged blow from an awl. Mordred scratches all of this away, wipes it out like clearing chalk off cut fabric, and replaces his thoughts with the image of snowy wastes the west. Then man stumbles, freezes, then relaxes. Mordred removes his hand. For a moment, the man waves, then steps aside: Mordred plucks the key out of his pocket and lets himself into the house. Behind him, the man - his name, too, lost to him - stumbles off into the night.

He stays in that house for almost a full month. In lieu of going back to taverns in the evenings, he sets about selling the tailor's possessions: he gets rid of the tools, the barrels, the storage-crates and spare clothes. He empties the cupboards, eats all the food, spends the coin on Glenside's continued stabling and tries to count how much more he will need to stay in the city till the snows are truly cleared. Each day he stays here is a risk, but wandering out into winter is a death sentence.

In the end, though, the sun comes out, and winter grudgingly recedes. He sees the first leaves of spring decorating the trees outside the city, and departs with a bag full of stolen coil and travelling supplies onto the south road.


	14. Idyll

For the first few weeks, he rides peacefully, without any particular aim. The travelling itself is pleasant, and without strife: evidently a lone, well-armed rider without significant supplies is the right balance of intimidating and unrewarding. Not once does he spy a bandit making designs on him, even distantly. Glenside carries him back towards Camelot with renewed vigour, happy to be out of the city. Mordred sympathises. The air out here is clean, unclogged by smoke and the scent of unwashed bodies. Nothing but fresh breezes and the open sky.

As spring arrives proper, flowers shaking themselves into vibrant life, he comes upon a decent-sized river that cuts across the road south, crossed by a small stone bridge. On a whim, he turns Glenside off the road and towards the copse of trees that cluster around its banks a short distance away. Under the leaves, the ground is rich with grasses and flowers, dappled in pale green. Beyond, on the other side, the trees curve around in a horseshoe, leaving a patch of flat, clear ground practically invisible from the road. A small mound cuts itself off into a hollow, clearly water-carved: not much, but three walls to keep out the wind, and enough of a roof to dissuade the rain. He pitches his tent underneath the overhang, then stretches out into the grass and closes his eyes.

He remains there in blissful peace for almost an hour, till Glenside comes to nudge him and he stands, smiling, to remove her tack. She wanders a short distance away and begins grazing happily, tossing her tail to and fro every now and again. The evening is coming on, bright daylight turning to dusk-gold, and he sets about gathering loose twigs to build a fire.

In the morning, he wakes to find Glenside still happily wandering, reveling in the open space and her freedom. Without thinking, Mordred goes to start packing up the tent, then pauses. Looks down at his hands. Drives the stake he had just pulled up back into the ground.

"I'm staying," he says, to no-one at all, and it sounds like a promise.

Encouraged by the water and the soil made rich by leaf-mulch, plants grow thick and heavy here. He picks mushrooms and wild fruits and plants to boil into broths and soups. There are plenty enough stones by the riverbank to select a few and scrape a dirt-path against the hollow wall for a firepit. That night he eats roasted mushroom and the last of his bread from the city, and feels something settle warm and comfortable in his heart.

It's almost frightening, the ease with which he settles into a routine. Spring gives way to summer, and by the time the days are long and hot, he has built a lean-to against one of the walls, where he can hang animals up to dry after cooking. Each day he tries to spend a few hours out on the road, greeting any travellers that pass by and politely enquiring if they have any goods to trade. Most don't, but he manages to buy a proper cooking-pot, better by far than his mess kit, and a bolt of waterproof canvas bought at the same time as a small wood-axe.

On midsummer, the sky is clear as far as he can see in every direction, and the air is warm, so he permits himself to spread his bedroll out under the soft pink of the sky as evening sets in. Glenside is further away, and the trickle of the river and the gentle buzz of the insects are the only sounds to disturb the still, quiet night. The sky fades to lavender, then indigo, then inky-black, decorated with a wealth of stars. Gently, he rubs his fingers against the prayer-cloths in his hair, and thinks of all he has now, then says a quiet prayer to the Goddess, and thanks her for her kindness. Sleep comes easily, in the calm.

The heat gives way to a temperate spell that drizzles with occasional rain for the next month or so, while Mordred cuts down a tree and splits its trunk into long, uneven planks. Once that's done, he begins building. First, layer upon layer of stones from the river, filled in with mud and baked with fire. The curve of the wall follows the overhang above, as close as he can manage. Inside, strong, straight branches are barred against the walls to act as supports. The room has the comforting dimness of a cave, lit by fire and what sun can creep in through his doorway once he hangs his bolt of canvas over it to keep out the wind and snow. He moves his tent to one corner, and clumsily puts together a box-frame out of the planks he had cut from the tree. With only a bedroll to cushion the wood, it will not be comfortable, but it will at least be warmer than sleeping on the ground.

By the time he is done with the work, autumn is properly upon him, and he spends as much time as he can preparing, gathering plants and berries and meat alike to store for winter. The days grow colder quickly here, and soon enough he feels the tell-tale bite of north winds. Within his new home, though, he is warm. Thankfully, the winter is gentle - or at least, it seems that way, protected as he is from the worst of the weather. At first, he ventures out frequently: then, as the snows come, less so. He does not trust his hand-build walls to take much weight, though, so clearing the hollow becomes a daily task, along with fetching water. The quiet and still is peaceful in ways he could never have imagined. His dreams, when they come, are of dawn over a distant forest. Gentle.

The first day the river is unfrozen, Mordred allows himself an extra slice of bread for breakfast. Warmer days are coming. He realises, when he goes to carve a new mark into his year-charm, that he has lost it sometime since his eighteenth anniversary. For some reason, the realisation does not hurt: he has Ise's prayer cloth, still, tied neatly into his hair alongside his own, and it keeps her close.

True spring is heralded by three days' downpour that leaves the ground soaked sodden: even with magic, Mordred can barely get his fire to light. He thanks the Goddess for her kindness in watering the earth, and emerges the morning after the fourth day to find the air clear and perfectly still, without a breath of wind. Glenside whickers indignantly at the damp, but everywhere new life emerges, the plains alive with flowers and bushes and grasses grown long and healthy in the new sun. As if to make up for the rain, the next few weeks are deliciously warm, and Mordred reinforces his walls to make up for whatever might have washed away over winter. From his pile of autumn supplies he takes the pine cones and plants lines of new trees at the outer edges of the copse. Most will not survive, but some will grow and live. He says a prayer for Kara as he goes, and thinks of the mountains.

The night after he plants the last sapling, he dreams of a burnt-out forest, ash and soot clinging in the air. Every step he takes snaps a fire-hollowed twig, but under his feet, small green things are growing again, fed by the rebirth of the world, and he cannot bring himself to feel sad about this, walking through the aftermath of someone else's tragedy. Everything grows again. Everything starts anew.

As the weeks draw on and the sun draws higher, things only grow more bright. Mordred works almost every day picking fruit and wild plants for eating, drying what he can for the autumn and winter, when things will grow scarce. Glenside, for her part, makes her displeasure about the heat known, whinnying and snorting as she moves about to dispel the flies that gather about her. Mordred brushes her daily to keep her coat clean, and teases her for the river-mud that dirties her legs and tail. He can't blame her, though, swimming in the river at midday when the sun's glare seems relentless and the coolness of the water is the only reprieve.

On midsummer, a steady breeze begins to blow from the east, welcome after long weeks of still air. Mordred notes the insects departing with the wind and smiles, then returns to folding dried food into strips of cut cloth to carry it. Glenside too seems grateful for the shift in weather, though the heat persists, thick and heavy.

A week later, Mordred wakes in the blessed cool of his room to an odd taste in the air. Rubbing his eyes, he dresses quickly and heads outside. To the east, a great towering pillar of smoke has blotted out the rising sun: above, dark clouds strafe the horizon, heavy and foreboding. The wind has picked up and he can taste the tang of smoke on the air. "Goddess, preserve us," he murmurs, momentarily stunned. Then he shakes his head and goes.

A sharp whistle calls Glenside from where she is prancing nearby, and he tacks up her up quickly, strapping on her saddlebags haphazardly: he spares his tent a mournful glance before grabbing his winter coats to bundle in next to Glenside's blanket. Quickly pulling on his shirt, he slings his freshly-filled waterskin over his shoulder and jams his sewing needles, wood-knife and axe into his knapsack. It's the work of a moment to put his sword and dagger about his waist, and he quickly begins packing as much food as he can carry. Awkwardly strapping his bedroll to the bottom of the bag, he jams his scarf through the straps and pulls it on. Glenside whinnies nervously as he mounts up quickly, already sweating. Over the plains, he can see fire now, climbing high and ugly into the sky. Mordred digs his heels into her flank, and she springs west.

They ride for unknowable hours without pause or rest, panting with exertion as the fire chases them in equal haste, until they come to a wide river. Mordred spies a bridge a short way down, but the fire is behind them and he directs Glenside straight into the water. Blessedly, the bank from which they are entering is shallow and sloped, and by the time the water comes to Glenside's knees they're already halfway across. At that depth, though, she pauses and will not be persuaded further, and Mordred sees the fire coming: in a split second, he decides, and dismounts, soaked up to his waist instantly. Keeping a tight hold on Glenside's reins, he kisses her forelock, then closes his eyes, presses his forehead to hers, and waits.


	15. Descent

It's a full hour before the fire burns itself out at the banks. Once it is done, smoke still hangs thick and oppressive in the air, a dull grey in every direction for miles. He leads Glenside out the river on shaking legs. Clouds have settled overhead, and the sky is dark. In the silence of the plains, their footsteps are a haunting echo as they go to the bridge, and cross. On the other side, the ground is unburned, but mostly bare. Glenside finds a patch of grass and lays down without preamble. Mordred pulls off her tack and sets it in a neat pile against her flank, then sits down beside her. She butts his shoulder with her head.

They stay like that, sitting together in quiet grief, until the dull light of day gives way to the hazy orange of early evening. Mordred puts on his scarf and wraps a coat tight around himself as the clouds draw together. Soon enough, rain comes down, first a trickle and then a downpour, as though the world were trying to make up for what it has done. In the distance, he can see the flash of lightning, but there is nothing left to burn. The smoke soaks from the air and washes down to coat the ground in a thick layer of sludgy ash. The river turns grey.

After a few hours, the rain slows from a pounding drumbeat to a gentle drizzle, still damp and unpleasant but no longer bone-chilling. A breeze wanders across the grass, and a burst of silver light on the dull water catches his eye. He glances up. Where the clouds had covered the sky, it has now cleared dramatically, and a perfect gap reveals the moon, silver and round and full. It hangs in the sky, a silent watcher, distant and lovely. Unreachable. A cloud shifts, and it is gone. Mordred lays out his bedroll and sleeps.

He is woken early by troubled dreams he cannot recall, and finds it still before dawn. Overnight, a new wind has picked up from the north and cleared the smoke in exchanged for an early-morning mist of last night's rain. It's cooler, too, thankfully, after the bitter heat of the flames.

Glenside rises as the sun does, and the mist disperses, hanging only in small wisps about clumps of bushes and bracken on the west side of the river. Mordred moves to the crest of the bridge and looks east as new light falls on the plains: as far as he can see, brilliant green has been exchanged for black. He descends, and tacks up Glenside. They depart west without looking back.

The rain continues intermittently for the next few days, as they pass from the wealth of the plains to poorer ground. There is grass, still: not much, but enough that Glenside can eat. Mordred nibbles unhappily at the food in his bag, counting the meals nervously. He has managed to find some food, a few plants and an unlucky bird, but not enough to sustain him. There will be a way to live here, but Mordred knows forests and valleys, not the tundra they ride through now, rich in short grass and moss and rock-flowers but little else. They turn south as they go, but the land is uneven and difficult, and their path ends up winding and twisted.

Autumn comes more quickly than he'd expected, the soil crackling a little beneath his feet as the first ice starts to form. Winds still blow from the north, bringing an early winter, and his hands are bare and made clumsy by the cold. He should have turned them south earlier, but now they are on the tundra, and cannot outrun the winter. Glenside 's blanket is a constant presence, and he never sheds his coats, but they are both of them dulled by the cold, tired of the journey and the hunger.

When the snow comes, it comes in earnest. A swell of clouds blows in from the north one afternoon and buries the ground thick and fast. By that evening, white lays in every direction, still imtermittently speckled with dull reds and muddy greens. Mordred still carries his sword habitually outside his coat, and sharpens it when he can. It feels heavy against his hip.

A few days after midwinter, they've paused for a moment by the bank of a small stream when he hears the snap of a brush-twig behind him. He turns immediately, searching out the source of the noise. The last of his food is almost gone, and any animal now will prolong his survival. For a moment, he swears he catches a glimpse of movement, of brown leather, and something in his stomach turns. Hastily, he mounts Glenside, and draws his sword just as the first raider bursts over the small mound of snow towards him, yelling wildly. Mordred lets out a cry of his own and spurs Glenside towards the man, who falters for a second, just long enough for Mordred to bury his blade in the man's neck. He can see three more behind the mound, and turns in a wide circle to come back round, but one of them yells, "Don't attack!"

He pauses, Glenside snorting and stamping at the snow beneath her feet. "What do you want?" he calls, his voice rough from disuse.

One of the men slowly emerges from their hiding-place, hands raised clearly. "Not to fight a mounted man who knows how to use his sword and would kill us all easily."

Glenside shifts, stepping sideways and backwards, hooves raised in clear threat. Mordred pats her on the neck, and she abates for the moment. "Then take your man, and I'll be on my way."

"Wait," the leader says, stepping towards him. Mordred tightens his grip on the hilt of his sword. "Dangerous business, travelling alone out here. Not much food, no roads, no people. Except for us. And we could use an extra pair of hands, and another horse."

"You're offering me a job," Mordred says flatly, not a question.

"Well," said the leader, nodding at the corpse of his companion where it stains the snow red, "we have a new opening."

Pride and revulsion swell in Mordred's chest, but he pushes them aside. He has no food left, and winter is baring its teeth at his exposed throat. Whatever these men do - whatever he may do - it's only in exchange for his own survival.

"I believe you have a deal," he says, hating how the words come out easily, without shaking. "I'm Mordred."

The man grins, a wicked facsimile of a smile. "Torn. Glad to have you with us, Mordred."

The group he has joined numbers fifteen, including himself. Torn, as best as he can tell, is the leader by general consensus: the man is strong and skilled with a blade, and has a charisma about him that is hard to deny.

The boy he had killed to earn his place here had been called Ishtan. A bare twenty-three years. Inexperienced, young, and reckless: his desperation to prove himself had earned him nothing but a sword in his neck.

When spring comes, the chill recedes, and the tundra at once transforms into a beautiful thing: scatterings of trees break up the horizon into chunks. Below their feet, the ground reveals lovely green and dusky red, grasses and moss crawling into the light.

After three days, Torn reports they've caught a trail: ten or twelve people, heading north a day ahead - maybe less. The news is greeted with aggressive enthusiasm by the rest of the group, and Mordred fakes a smile without thinking. In his mind, he sees Kit's face as a spear struck his shoulder, as he fell, but he banishes it. If he leaves now, he's as good as dead. It's kill or die.

Picking up their pace, they come upon their quarry the next day, near noon. Peering over the edge of a snowdrift, Mordred counts eleven people: all men, all armed. Mercenaries, perhaps? A cart sits inside the group, but there are no horses, so they must be pulling it themselves. No wonder they're so slow.

He ducks back down, and relays this information to Torn, who turns to one of the raiders, a tall slim man named Ar. As Torn gestures, Arn goes around the other side with three men, all with swords drawn. Mordred draws his own: own. Torn gives him a feral grin, all teeth, then lets out a almighty road and bursts over the snowdrift: Mordred lets out a similar cry and follows.

The battle is brief, and bloody, and when it's done, two of their own are dead, but they have slaughtered all the mercenaries save one, who Torn binds and questions while the rest of them examine the cart. Sure enough, it contains a healthy quantity of food and other useful supplies - blankets, salt, arrows - and Mordred starts hauling it to their cart without preamble, accompanied by half a dozen of the other men. As he's shifting a bag of dried meat, he notices Ar poking through the dead men's pockets, taking out small trinkets and tucking them inside his own coat. Mordred glances away.

Across the drift, Torn thanks his prisoner, then unties him and shoves him harshly towards the edge of the snowbank. The man - unarmed, and stripped of his warm coat - stumbles, glances back for a moment, then flees south. Torn clicks his tongue at the receding figure, a grin on his face. "We're in business, boys. Our friend over there has just told me there's a gig for us. Ismere Fortress has been reinhabited." Glancing around subtly, Mordred notices he's not the only one who doesn't understand the significance of this statement. "One of the old castles west of here, in Camelot lands. Anyway, the word is the new Lady of the castle will pay handsomely for slaves to get the place running again. This lot," he gestures at the scattered corpses, "were heading to the border road to pick up cargo. We can do the same, and be paid what we have rightfully earned!"

It's not far to the road that marks the border between Mercia and Camelot, and sped by new energy and fresh supplies, they make good time. For nearly three weeks, they travel south down the road - Ismere is west, still, and the further south they go the busier the road gets - before they come upon a suitable target: a trading caravan, well-stocked and unprotected, moving slowly south towards Camelot. After two days of assessing it, they descend, and capture the entire group with little difficulty.

Torn puts him in charge of their new prisoners. As he ties them up, he questions them about their lack of protection, and eventually one of the women admits they had a soldier with them, but he abandoned them not long before. After that, they remain in bitter, angry silence. An awful sickness turns in Mordred's stomach, but if he runs now, he'll earn nothing but an arrow in his back. That night, he sleeps poorly, dreaming of a small dark cave with no exit, of clawing desperately at the rock with hands which magic has deserted.

They turn west without delay, making all possible haste for Ismere. Though the tundras are still harsh and unforgiving, the weather, at least, has relented: late spring has brought with it some semblance of warmth. To the north, the ice glitters like a knife laid across the horizon, but here, they pass across swathes of grass and rocks decorated with thrift and heather, a tableau of greens and reds and purples.

When Ismere Fortress comes into view, crawling above the horizon like a dark shadow, Mordred shivers despite the new summer air. It looms, awful and imposing, but there is still nowhere to run. He closes his eyes and tries to think of nothing at all.

After two months on horseback, arriving is a welcome reprieve, and they stay for a week after their cargo is delivered, relishing in lit fires and wooden tables and a respite from the endless dull ache of travel. Rumours come to them, while they are camped half within the courtyard and half outside the walls. The Lady of the fortress is ever busy, it is said, and rarely seen, for she works constantly within her chambers, consumed by some dark passion. Even so, a name is whispered, over and over. Morgana.

He thinks on her, as they move south. So much time has passed since he last saw her, and what he remembers now is faint and faded. Dark hair and pale skin, ethereal and lovely. Once, she was kind. But these things are no longer true. They travel towards the Camelot road and he dreams of a dark gorge with walls painted in red and scatters of broken armour decorating the grass. Some nights, he is alone. Others, he is accompanied by Emrys, who takes his hand as they pass through this place, this horrific aftermath, blood-red in the new sun. Always he catches glimpses of a woman, haunting the battlefield, following in his footsteps like a discontented ghost, sometimes in ragged black but other times in her Camelot court-gowns of blue and green. When he wakes, his mind drifts to graves in a stone cavern under the mountains, the first place he ever buried his hopes. By the time they reach the road, he has no more will to run.

Travelling west along the road at the north of Camelot, it takes them a full month before they come across a suitable target: here, many caravans are well-armed and well protected. Eventually, though, they find a group with a single guard, protecting a caravan with delicate fabrics and luxuries from Queen Annis's lands. Torn gives the order for the horses to be unhooked, and Mordred mounts up Glenside with trepidation in his heart.

In the end, the battle is pitifully easy. Mordred strikes the soldier from his horse with a single blow, and catches the stallion's reins before it can bolt while the man bleeds into the dirt. Torn and the others round up the traders without ceremony, and when they depart, several hours later, he's instructed to mount up. Thanks to the stallion he caught they now have enough horses to haul all the carts, and he makes an intimidating guard. Despite himself, he is glad. At least this way, he is not responsible for the prisoners. At least this way, he will not be the face they carry with them to their new cage.

The journey back passes quickly, days blurring together as summer turns to autumn, cold winds skirting the hills and sweeping the hollows as they go. Under his coat and scarf, Mordred fiddles with the charm that still hangs about his neck, worn smooth from years of handling. The afternoon that Ismere crests the horizon, he tugs it off and casts it into the dirt. Here, invisibility is no protection. He must look dangerous. It is easy to do so: Glenside's tack is well-cleaned and well-kept, and on her back he is an intimidating figure, tall and regal. By the standards of these men he is well-dressed, and like all of them, he keeps his sword at his hip even in his sleep. Of late, it has accompanied him into his dreams: Emrys walks at his left hand, when he comes, and the blade hangs between them, unspoken.

There is an odd humming in the ground as they arrive, as though the earth were a restless sleeper, shifting in its slumber. An explanation comes quickly, though, in the rumours: Morgana is tearing up the citadel. Searching for something. What is it? Nobody knows, exactly. A weapon, probably, or perhaps a key. A key to what? The slaves and soldiers he talks to shrug at that. Who cares?

Word comes soon enough. Ismere's activities have begun to attract attention from Camelot, and they are to patrol the west lands for stray patrols for the rest of the winter. His grin is matched by the rest when he says how much they'll be making. More if they bring back prisoners.

They leave two days later, and move west for two weeks as the winter grips the world tight. By the time they reach the forest they're to cover, Mordred is sick from shivering, cold and bitter and numb. He helps set up traps by rote, stringing nets into trees with shaking hands.

As the ice settles in for a long stay, they begin to catch people. A man with a sword that they disarm easily. A woman, and her son. The boy peers up into Mordred's face as they tie him up, brown eyes wide and guileless, and he has to turn away. That night, as he sleeps, he imagines his hands coated in shining red and gold.

_What are you doing?_

"I don't know."

_Then change._

"You say that like it's simple."

_You say that like it's not._


	16. Amendment

Two weeks after they arrive in the forest, he wakes early in the morning to a clear and cloudless sky and a new warmth in the air. With nothing better to do, he goes to check the animal-snares, and finds two birds within a short distance of each other. Tying them together with a short length of rope, he turns and habitually makes for the clearing where one of their larger traps is strung.

He's barely even made it to the edge of the treeline when he sees Torn brandishing a sword at a man before him, another in armour laid on the ground. He calls out, "Stop!"

The standing man turns to look at him as he approaches, and the force of the worldmagic hits Mordred like a crashing wave.

Emrys.

Arthur Pendragon.

As he draws close, he tosses the catch aside without thinking, and forces himself to meet Emrys's gaze.

"Shouldn't we leave it to the Lady Morgana to decide their fate?" As he speaks, he grasps for the edges of Torn's mind, finds his thoughts, and presses in, _believe me, listen to me, be moderate, let them live, let them live._

After a second, Torn chuckles, backing away, and Mordred dips his chin, unable to bear Emrys's stare any longer. Instead, he moves over to Arthur, offering a hand. "You don't remember me, do you?" he asks, as he pulls the King to his feet. Arthur narrows his eyes, searching for recognition. "You saved my life once, many years ago."

"Mordred."

He glances over at Emrys for a moment. Gives him a smile, then turns back. "Hello, Arthur."

With the very King of Camelot as a prisoner, they waste no more time, Torn setting a punishing pace for Ismere. By the end of the first day, Mordred's legs ache: by the third, his ankles are rubbing raw, and he takes the excuse of relieving himself behind a snowdrift to unlace his boots, press cold fingers against the blistered skin and whisper a quick healing-spell. Their prisoners, thirteen in total, are faring no better, hungry and thirsty and cold as they are. Mordred checks Glenside with anxious hands each morning and evening, scanning for cold sores or wounds, but she seems well, if tired. That, he can sympathise with.

Torn spends the fourth evening mocking Emrys in bitter cruelty, and Mordred bites his tongue till the men fall asleep, then steals the spare bread into his coat and stays his watch for the night. When the first rays of pre-dawn light streak the sky in delicate blue, he moves over to Emrys, crouches, and offers the bread.

"Why are you doing this?"

He glances over to where Arthur sleeps, and thinks of warning bells and a metal grate, the shallow kiss of moonlight and a desperate ride through a darkened forest, attended by shadows of fluttering red. "He once saved my life. I owe him a debt. Don't be so quick to judge me."

Emrys fixes him with a glare, still intimidating despite the shivering-cold that wreaths him, and Mordred bites back on the impulse to open his mind and make him _understand_. "You fear me, Emrys, don't you?" he asks instead, and in his mind's eye sees a red sky. "I know the hatred and suspicion with which men treat those with magic." His voice is near a whisper, confessing a forbidden secret to the closest thing to a God he will ever meet. "You and I are not so different. I, too, have learned to hide my gifts."

When it becomes clear Emrys will not take it, he sets the food down on the snow by his feet.

"I promise, your secret is safe with me."

"What's Morgana looking for in Ismere?"

"Would that I could tell you." He considers. "A key, I believe, but I know not to what."

The fight was inevitable, but it breaks out so quickly on the fifth day he barely has time to react - Emrys and Arthur cut themselves and five others free before he can even draw his sword. A horse goes wild and Mordred grabs to catch Glenside's halter as the towing-tack snaps and she rears in blind panic. After a moment, she calms, and he turns and gives chase as Emrys scrambles over a snowbank and out of sight. Three others are ahead of him and sees a man - Jikka? - fall with a crossbow bolt in his chest. Barely keeping his footing, he rounds the bend and finds himself suddenly face-to-face with fate. About him lie the bodies of fallen men. Pausing, he meet's Arthur's gaze. A strange serenity passes over him, and he stands tall and unbowed, waiting for the end of the world, and the beginning of something new.

It does not come.

For a moment, he meets Emrys's eyes - bright, painful blue - and then quietly turns away, some nameless melancholy stirring in his chest.

He returns to the cart to find three more of their prisoners gone. Torn draws his sword at Mordred's chest, and Mordred pries open his mind without thinking, crushing the anger down because if he doesn't, he'll be another body in the ice. For the next mile that they travel, his boots track bloodstains in the snow.

With the pace unslowed, they arrive at Ismere two days later. Torn has been snappish, and Mordred can feel the edge of fury at the idiot foreign boy who let the King of Camelot escape. By the time they pull into the courtyard, his head is burning fit to burst, swirling with a dark maelstrom of hatred and bitter anger. Only some of it is his own.

It is late evening while they unload, and Mordred untacks Glenside with gentle hands while the others rally the prisoners. Glenside whickers and presses her head into Mordred's chest, and he takes off his gloves to card his fingers through her mane, then digs a carrot out of his pack. Though still tired, she perks up a little, eating it out of his hands with eager fervour. Once's she's done, he checks her hooves out of long habit, and she lets out a grateful whinny as he picks out a small stone.

Behind him, he hears Torn talking grandly to one of the other men, and turns in time to see their leader striding towards a woman in a black gown. Torn begins to address her, gesturing largely, but she silences him with a look, and steps past him.

"Mordred?"

She reaches out a shaking hand, lays it uncertainly against the curve of his scarf, and he forces a fluttering smile. He has to, because somehow she still recognised him after all these years, recognised him where Arthur had not, and he will certainly be met with ill-favour if he rejects her attention now.

As he follows her into the corridors of the keep, once Glenside has been stabled away from the other castle-horses, he turns over his roiling heart in his chest. She is the hand that pulls the strings of these men, but she is a sorceress first, and it has been so long since he could use magic without the fear of a blade at his back or a knife at his throat. As they go, he absently notes supply cupboards, pantries, kitchens. Old habits. When they arrive at her chambers, though, he sees a table laid with food, and all rumination is set aside in favour of digging in.

For her part, Morgana seems content to watch him. As he eats, he brushes gingerly against the edges of her mind, and feels the oily slick of a sick fascination. Abruptly, the meat turns sour in his mouth, and he stops.

"I feared you were dead," she begins, after a moment. "It's dangerous for those of us with magic."

"It's not been easy," he confesses, and despite himself, despite the sick feeling in his stomach, saying the words is a dark relief, a weight sliding off his tongue like liquid silver.

"For any of us."

"Sorcery frightens people," he replies, slowly. "Even some of those who claim to support it."

"You see a lot."

"I've learned to." An awful wavering takes his throat, and he fights to keep his voice steady. "I've had to." A breath. "If I was not to be burned at the stake or exploited for another man's gain." Under his words, the current of his mind curves against hers, _understand me, you're like me, you know what I have been through, prove to me you can still be the person I remember_.

"Attitudes will change soon." She gives him a smile, and he feels a flicker of hope, leaning back in his chair. "The Old Religion will reign once more. There'll be nothing to fear once Arthur and his kind are cleansed from the earth."

His smile fades. "You know, we had Arthur in our grasp." Voice flat. Do not provoke the wildcat inside her own den. "He escaped."

"You let him go?"

"He got away."

"How? Who let him go?"

"It was an accident." Even to his own ears, he sounds like he's pleading.

"Kill him, that's all they had to do!" She flings a knife across the room and he swallows, fear rising. "I'm a High Priestess-"

"Morgana-"

"-I have the power of the heavens in my hand and yet he continues to defy me-"

" _Calm yourself_ ," he commands, and the undercurrent of power in his words freezes the fire of her mind into black ice.

"I want his annihilation, Mordred," she says, staring into his face, and he feels the fear of a prey outmatched by its predator. "I want to put his head on a spike, I want to watch as the crows feast on his eyes!" She is cut off by the clanging of a loud bell, brassy and clear, and an awful smile overtakes her face. "Arthur."

When she goes, he follows. What else can he do?

When they come upon him, he's looking for Emrys. Of course.

"How good of you to save me the trouble of finding you," Morgana drawls, and Arthur goes instinctively for a sword that is not there. At that, Morgana's voice turns gloating. "Oh dear, how remiss of you." She continues talking, and Mordred fingers the hilt of his dagger as Morgana casts her own to Arthur's throat.

"I'm sorry about what our father did to you," Arthur tries, and Morgana sneers.

"Uther was never my father."

"But we are brother and sister," Arthur says, and Mordred freezes.

What kind of world would Morgana ever make that Kara could live in?

He hears the exchange in a blurred wash of strange slowness, as he thinks of a girl who grew up in the heart of a mountain, in a cave like this one, who lost her brother to the city and her safety to it too. He thinks of Ise, a reflection of what might have been, a family beyond family, and knows what she would have him do. Emrys calls out and Mordred draws his dagger, steps a little closer behind Morgana as she casts Emrys aside like swatting a fly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Emrys's hand rise, then drop.

He makes his decision.

She falls gasping his name, and under his fingers he feels the grass-braids Kara had woven for him so long ago. Above, he hears a distant rumble of thunder, and thinks of the Goddess. Wonders who she's crying for. Morgana lies still before him, and he pulls off his gloves to lay two fingers on her neck. Her pulse is flickering and weak, but still faintly there.

He thinks of his sister. Of the kind of future she might have. Of the vengeance Morgana might wreak. "Goddess, forgive me," he murmurs, and finishes it.

Emrys's unconscious form is heavy, and Arthur's more so, but he pulls off their armour with only a little difficulty, then slings one over each shoulder as best he can. After ten paces, though, he already knows he will not make it far. Ahead, the cavern is quiet, but he stumbles onwards, heedless and numb. After a moment, he hears the sound of muffled footsteps in the dirt, then rounds a corner to a crowd of men, freed prisoners by their appearance, carrying swords and picks in plenty.

"Arthur, Merlin," one of them says, incredulous. A tall man with a sword takes arthur, and a shorter man with dark hair and handsome features takes Merlin. They retreat without delay, and after a moment's hesitation, a glance back at where Morgana's body lies, he follows.

He finds Glenside in the stables, the only horse left, and advises the dark-haired man - Sir Gwaine, he finds out - on the closest cupboard where he might steal supplies. Torn's cart is still in the courtyard, half-filled with food and empty of the men, who must have fled when the fighting began. He hooks Glenside back up with regretful hands, and presses a kiss to her forelock as Sir Gwaine and his companion Sir Percival return. Sir Percival lifts Emrys and the King onto the back of the cart, and lays pilfered blankets over them reverently, while Sir Gwaine passes out mismatched shirts and cloaks as quickly as he can. Mordred helps pack extra bread into his knapsack, the only bag between all of them, then takes Glenside's halter and leads her towards the southern gate, and freedom.

Sunrise across the ice is slow and beautiful. Beneath their feet, the snow turns delicate gold, and Mordred feels a great and terrible weight lift from his chest as it fills with cool spring air, breathing in the new light.

Once they are a distance away and he dares leave Glenside, he lets Sir Gwaine take her halter and clamber into the cart to check Emrys and Arthur's wounds. Emrys's injury is only superficial, but Arthur's are deeper, and he binds them with cloth-cut bandage, pressing flickers of silver in as he does. Using magic near so many Knights sparks fear in his bones, but this way, at least, Arthur will live.

They catch the first glimpse of smoke on the fourth day of travel. By then, Emrys is well enough to join them around the evening fire, though Arthur cannot yet move under his own power, and remains in the cart, half-awake. By afternoon the next day, they reach a village on the northern road, and on the advice of the innkeeper he walks the two miles east to a trading post, then returns with a bundle of clothing and blankets and bread, bought with all the blood-money he still carried. Camelot is only five days south, and he does not want to come to the white city with red coins still staining his palms. He shares out the supplies quickly, and gets a few rounds of back-slapping and sincere thanks, which throw him off guard a little. After the third hearty embrace, though, he has collected himself enough to smile back. That night, he talks and jokes with them into the dark hours, relieved to be out of the snows and on a true road again.

After that, the journey is largely uneventful. Mordred, no stranger to the risk of travelling with a cart, keeps his sword close at hand at all times, but even through the forest they are not threatened. When they break through the treeline on the south side of the Darkling Woods, Camelot rises before them in silver splendour, and a cheer goes up among the men. They pass swiftly through well-kept fields, and reach the gate during mid-afternoon on a warm day in full sun. They are stopped for only a moment, then pass in, and as they move up the broad central street of the lower town, Mordred hears a cry go up on the walls.

"The Knights have returned!"

"The Knights have come back from the North!"

"The King is come to Camelot!"

At Sir Gwaine's bidding, and with the permission of a man named Sir Leon who Mordred gathers is in charge of the Knights, he spends three days in the communal area of the barracks. The lack of privacy is a little disconcerting, but the food is good, and the rooms are warm, and that is all that matters. He contents himself to bribing favours - with errands, with needlework, with food squirreled from the table at dinner - to get his clothes cleaned and make himself presentable again. One of the maids takes a shine to him, and lets him use a washroom to clean himself, then helps him weave his long hair into neat braids that can gather at the back of his head. Absently, he rubs his fingers against the fabric ties worn thin by the years, and thinks of Ise, far to the east. That night, he prays long to the Goddess before he sleeps, offering all the love he can find for her favour.

A page comes to him the next morning, when he is darning a weak patch in his shirt with a borrowed needle and thread. "The King requests your presence. Please come with me." The boy takes off without waiting for an answer, and Mordred hurries after him. Quickly, he reties his hair, stows his sewing things in a pocket, and resets his sword neatly at his waist, as they go up stone staircases and into the vaulted halls he distantly recalls from childhood.

The page abandons him outside a large set of imposing wood doors. Taking a deep breath, he raises a hand, and knocks firmly. A voice from within calls out, "Enter!", and he pushes the door open and steps inside.

Arthur sits in a large-high backed chair at the end of a wooden table. He is dressed in a dark shirt, but Mordred can see clearly where a twist of bandages lays under the fabric, even as he closes the door behind him. "You summoned me, sire?"

"Yes, I did. Please, sit down." Arthur nods at another chair, and Mordred seats himself, careful to stay straight-backed and proper. "Mordred, if I'm not mistaken."

"Such is the name my mother gave me, sire."

Arthur smiles, and leans forwards onto his elbows, moving with careful slowness. "I understand I have you to thank for my life." Mordred inclines his head, but says nothing. "Sir Gwaine and Sir Percival inform me that you treated my injuries while we were on the road back to Camelot. My manservant Merlin you treated as well, no?"

Mordred nods. "I am no healer, sire, but I studied the medicinal arts some time ago. Enough that I felt duty-bound to try and help in what manner I could."

Arthur fixes him with a look. "You stabbed the Lady Morgana, also."

Mordred shifts uncomfortably. "I- that is-"

"You were behind her. She had me at her mercy, and you stabbed her in the back, did you not?"

"Yes, sire." Honestly compels him to add, "and checked to see if she was passed on."

Arthur takes in a sharp breath. "Was she?"

A pause. "Yes. Unless she has magical means of which I know not, the Lady has departed from this world."

Arthur exhales slowly. "That is... useful information. Thank you, Mordred."

"Of course, sire." For a moment, Mordred dithers in uncomfortable silence, unsure if he should now leave, or yet stay. Thankfully, Arthur saves him from having to deliberate further.

"I have been thinking on you, since I arrived back in Camelot. You displayed great bravery in Ismere. You carry yourself like a soldier, and I see that even now you are armed."

"Sire-" Mordred begins to protest, but Arthur cuts him off.

"It's not a criticism. I would not leave my blade unattended in a strange place either. I wonder only whether your skill matches your good sense and valour."

"Sire?"

Arthur nods at an unoccupied space of floor. "Show me, if you would."

Mordred gets to his feet, and after a moment, sheds his coat, draping it carefully over the chair-back. He draws his sword, settles into a comfortable stance, and then launches into a sequence. He darts back and forth, circling and slashing, parrying an invisible foe and ducking imagined foes, he shows off every flourish he can bring to mind, keeping his moves practical and without show, then finishes with a neat thrust. He bows to the King as he sheathes his weapon, then moves after a moment to stand at the end of the table, hands tucked behind his back. Arthur stands slowly, and moves to look Mordred up and down.

"Where did you learn?"

"My mother taught me, sire," Mordred replies, because he does not wish to be more dishonest than is necessary for his own survival. "She was originally of the city, and learned swordcraft from her father, and saw fit to teach it to her children in turn."

"Do you intent to stay in Camelot? Or will you depart, once you have the means?"

Mordred takes a deep breath, but in the end the answer is an obvious one. "I wish to remain here, sire, while I can."

Arthur nods. "And your prospects?"

Mordred ducks his head. "In truth, fighting is my best skill, but I have been a cook, a cleaner, a trader and a labourer before. No doubt I will find some work."

"I would offer you an option to consider, then."

"Sire?"

Arthur holds out a hand, in which lies a small golden brooch. Mordred takes it, and turns it over: into the surface is carved a small Pendragon symbol, and he recognises it suddenly as one half of the pair of ties which holds together a Knight's cloak.

"Camelot always has need of good men. You seem to me, and to all others with whom I have spoken of you, an honourable man, a skilled fighter, thus far polite and moderate in all things. If you would accept, I would have you be a Knight."

For a moment, words stick in Mordred's throat. Then, he finds his voice again. "It would be my honour, sire."

Arthur claps him on the shoulder. "Excellent. The arrangements will be made straight away. Run along, now, and I'll send a page to fetch you uniform and assign you a barracks-space."

"Yes, sire. Thank you, sire." He nods, and lets himself out. Once in the corridor, he permits himself to let out a shaky breath, then descends back towards the barracks.

The next week passes in an incredulous blur, and the morning of the ceremony, he wakes early, and pulls on his robes and armour with trembling hands. He kneels before the King, and swears an Oath to the Crown, and to the brotherhood he now joins, and to the lands that are his home. A red cloak drapes about his shoulders, and his mother's sword is at his side, and he rises a Knight of Camelot.

Waves of applause buoy his exist from the hall into a small antechamber, and he begins to pull at the buckle at his neck to remove his cloak when he hears Emrys speak. "Here. Let me help you with that."

He ceases his movements, and hears the steps as Emrys comes up behind him. Hands reach around to undo the buckle, and Emrys pulls the mantle off his shoulders and sets it aside. "Thank you," he says, and means it for more than he could possibly explain.

"You know," Emrys says, "if Arthur knew you had magic, things would be very different." He turns, hesitantly, fighting the swell of sadness and anger in his chest, and sees Emrys on the other side of the room, only a few paces away but unreachable all the same. "Tell me something."

"Of course."

"You saved Arthur's life." Emrys sounds almost proud. "Why?"

Another stir of sadness takes him, and he mulls it over, but in the end, there is only one answer he can give. "Because Arthur is right. The love that binds us is more important than the power we wield."

Emrys looks into his face a moment longer, searching for something, though Mordred does not know what. Then, he nods, apparently satisfied, and steps away. Mordred gives him a smile, and then he is gone.

Mordred's new life is busy, and he throws himself into it eagerly: days pass in a swirl of training and patrols, weapons and armour, finding his way about the castle and the town. In the mornings and afternoons, he drills endlessly, getting used to the weight of metal about him as he moves. After each session, he feels brighter, fresher, more awake somehow, as though his whole self has sprung back to life with the relearning of this dance he has known so well.

He accompanies Sir Leon on patrols about the castle, where the Knight lectures him on proper practice and good stature, on presenting the face of the Round Table. Image, he explains, is more than just how they look. It is how they assure the kingdom's people they are protected. Soon, Mordred walks with his back straight, hands folded under the long drape of his cloak. There is a new formality to his step here, a new kind of pride when he returns to the barracks in the early evening. Sir Gwaine is endlessly friendly, and still grateful for his deeds in Ismere, and soon he finds himself enveloped in a strange group of friends. Gwaine, Percival, Leon, and a handsome Knight named Lancelot, who befriends Mordred with delicate ease.

On one evening in mid-spring, after the meal, Lancelot ushers Mordred away from the barracks and guides him towards a high staircase Mordred has never been up before, despite his efforts to learn the castle. Now, the sunset sky paints the walls in stripes of soft pink as he climbs after Lancelot, moving up past a high balcony and a small antechamber towards a wooden trapdoor.

"Where are you leading me?" asks Mordred, a little tentative.

"Just trust me, alright?" Lancelot says, and gives him a nervous smile. Then, he pushes open the trapdoor and clambers up. After a moment, he extends a hand back down through. Mordred murmurs a quick blessing to himself, then grasps Lancelot's hand and lets himself be pulled into the light.

The roof is lightly sloped, less than halfway to upright, and Lancelot winks as he closes the trapdoor behind them, jamming the latch so it cannot be sealed from the inside. Then he climbs towards the crest of the steepled roof, and Mordred follows, feeling awkward and graceless next to Lancelot's careful, precise movement. As he settles himself on the peak, Lancelot slings an easy arm around his shoulders.

Before them, laid out like a map-sketch rendered in glorious colour, is the city. His breath catches in his throat. Their rooftop faces west, and the town sprawls out below like a cat, bathing contented in the gentle evening light. He can make out the streets of the upper town, the way the light skims and floats over flagstones like a golden mist, hazy and precious. Below, and further, the lower town is laid in rat-run streets, a friendly maze. Absently, he reaches a hand and traces the lines of roads with a finger, imagining a child in a blue cloak, roaming the streets with all the freedom of someone not yet bound to anything. Camelot red still drapes about his shoulders, but for this he would trade nothing.

After a few minutes, Lancelot drops the arm from his shoulders and wraps it around his waist. Mordred tilt's his head onto Lancelot's shoulder, feeling curiously loved, and they stay until the sun goes down.

Two days later is the feast for the anniversary of Arthur's coronation, and for the first time, Mordred is afforded a place at the highest table of Knights. Sitting between Lancelot and Gwaine, he spends a large part of the meal watching Arthur, who seems distinctly melancholy. Then, he refocuses, as Arthur departs. It is the first time he has seen Guinevere other than at a distance, or as a passing glance in the corridor, and there is something distinctly familiar about her face, though he cannot place it.

The King and Emrys disappear for a week, then return, and with the King's arrival back to the city comes a meeting of the Round Table. The evening before, a page stops by to tell Mordred he is to attend, and he spends the night pacing his small room until exhaustion drops him asleep atop his bed still fully clothed. In the morning he wakes early, as is his habit, and makes himself as presentable as he can. His braids are neatly done in the Camelot fashion, and he polishes his armour a little before putting it on, pleased at the speed with which he has grown used to it.

The meeting itself is dull, mostly. Grain yields and reports on crime make up the majority, but when one of the Knights rises to speak about the tracking of sorcerers, he feels a heavy sickness in his chest. At his shoulder, his Druid swirl seems to prickle, concealed under fabric and iron. Nobody here knows, he reminds himself. Nobody here has seen the truth of him. Except, of course, for Emrys, who stands in the corner of the room. Mordred has tried to speak with him and each time been met with cold rebuttals. Sometimes, he swears he can feel the ice of Emrys's glare upon him when they are in the same room.

Sir Leon's report on troop postings is disturbed by a strange wind which blows open the doors, and Mordred spins frantically, but there's nothing there. He's still musing on what could have caused such a thing when the chandelier falls.

The crash is almighty, and he jumps half out of his skin. After a moment, he glances up to see a faint plume of smoke wafting from the hanging-point, and dread curdles in his chest. Before them, the table is cracked down the centre, split like an orb of glass dropped onto stone.

For the next week, a fey strangeness seems to overtake the castle. An axe falls on Sir Percival; Sir Gwaine's horse throws him and nearly tramples him; rumours circulate of the Queen being injured in a kitchen fire. Then, as suddenly as it has come, the creeping sense of fear is gone. It takes a week more before he can shed his nervous anxiety, but on a patrol in town on a warm day with a Knight named Sir Cador, he buys himself a small pastry to eat in the sun, and relaxes.

He settles back into routine easily enough, after that: patrols and drilling, early morning meals and early evening dinners. Drinking with Gwaine, and more frequently, not-drinking with Gwaine. The man tries to entice Mordred into entertaining a lady's company, and then a man's, but he listens attentively when Mordred explains about being heart-still and caring not for such things, and after that, is respectful and polite, though he does not change his bawdy jokes. For this, Mordred is glad: the last thing he wants is to be treated as fragile. He had beat Percival three days in a row before the man would spar with him properly.

Now, though, the Knights treat him as one of their own, and the first time he holds his defence against two others, Lancelot hoists him up onto his shoulders and parades him around the near-empty training ground. Mordred slips and slides around wildly, and they end up toppling in an ungainly heap to the ground, laughing so hard Mordred half-forgets how to breathe. He rolls onto his back and stares up at the clouded sky, cloak spread out under him in a tableau of noble red, Lancelot at his side, and thinks of the mountains.

Three nights later, he dreams of caves under a forest sky, painted in endless green, and an indescribable grief takes him. The city is his home, as it has ever been, but his sister is half his soul, and in eight years he has not known her hand in his. Has not known the echo of a mountain river in a deep valley. Has not known the rains in spring and the gathering in autumn. Has not known Kara's smile. He wakes with tears trickling down his cheeks. "What is not me is you", he murmurs, half prayer and half memory, and rubs his fingers habitually over the green cloth that still ties back his hair. Another lost sister.

It is not difficult to find Emrys: he glows like a sun, and Mordred need only open the edge of his senses to find the bright gold of the worldmagic. Still, Emrys himself is skilled at avoiding Mordred, and it takes half a day of being eluded before he manages to find him at the midday meal, when he is stuck serving Arthur and cannot leave. Steeling himself, he knocks at the door, then enters when bidden from within.

"Mordred!" Arthur says congenially when he enters. Abruptly, Mordred realises this is the first time they have spoken outside the training field since Arthur offered him this position. "Will you join me?"

"I regret that I cannot, sire," Mordred replies, bowing his head respectfully. "If I might, I had hoped to speak with your manservant, in fact." He glances across to Emrys, who narrows his eyes. Mordred's smile fades a little, bitterness biting at his heart.

Arthur, however, seems oblivious to the exchange. "Of course, Go on, Merlin. Bring him back in one piece, Sir Mordred," he jokes, as Emrys begins reluctantly moving towards the door.

"Of course, sire," Mordred replies, as the two of them leave.

"What do you want, Mordred?" Emrys hisses, as soon as they're out of the room. Mordred's heart sinks a little further, but he rallies himself, with some difficulty.

"Not here. Follow me."

"And if I don't?" Emrys asks, sounding a little petulant.

"Then I'll tell the King that you did not come with me, as bidden, and he will disapprove."

At that, Emrys relents, and follows Mordred as he ducks them into an empty room, then bolts the door. He had chosen this spare chamber in the knowledge that it is always deserted - a bed is made in one corner, but the fireplace is dusty, the chairs unused.

Emrys goes to speak, clearly irritated, but Mordred cuts him off. "I know about the prophecy."

Emrys closes his mouth.

"I know what I am destined to do. I have known for years. I know you have every right to be afraid of me. To hate me." Mordred takes a deep breath, and stabs a swordpoint into the ugly mass of guilt in his chest. "I know I am the one they name Kingslayer."

Emrys takes a step towards him, and Mordred backs up, feeling like a butterfly caught in the glass jar of a curious researcher. "Then why are you here?"

"Because this city is my home. Because this is where I belong. And because I have no intention of carrying out what fate ordains for me."

"You have no control over fate."

A sharp wrench of misery pins him through the chest. "I cannot believe that is true."

Emrys approaches, a stride, and Mordred holds up a hand. He halts, just beyond arm's length. "You will kill him. I have Seen it." A flicker of gold dances at the corner of Mordred's vision, and he sees a coil of magic swirling towards him. It coalesces into a point and he feels the needle-sharp threat of fate at his throat. Emrys says nothing. Mordred dares not breathe.

The gold dissipates. The blade dissolved. Emrys grabs him by the shirt and shoves him bodily into the stone wall, and by the time Mordred catches his breath, the door is open and his destiny is gone.


	17. Verdict

It is two days later that he is called to Arthur's chambers by a page, and his heart flutters in the chest all the while as Arthur tells him he is to join them on the patrol the next day.

That morning, he wakes before the rest of the garrison, packs quickly, and goes to the stables just as the rays of dawn crest the horizon. He has not had much time to visit Glenside, busy as he has been with his new life, and he murmurs to her quietly as he tacks her up, telling her about training and drilling and the halls of the citadel, of the mountains and the forests and the Goddess, the way she paints the sky in silver lightning with her tears. When the others arrive in the courtyard, he is already mounted, his gear neatly packed, and Arthur gives him a brief word of praise for timeliness before they depart.

The ride is long, but pleasant, Glenside's saddle a familiar form under him. After so long in the city, the forest is gloriously welcome, and though he remains at the rear of the patrol, he feels light and wild and delightfully free. Ahead, the glow of the worldmagic twisting about Emrys seems magnified, here in the wild places where power breathes through every living thing.

They come upon Osgar's trail just before noon, and quickly dismount, tying the horses swiftly. Mordred allows the others to lead, his sword drawn at his side. After a few minutes, Percival spots a scrap of black fabric on a branch, and a moment later, Mordred spies a flash of dark movement in the undergrowth. They fan out quickly, Gwaine moving left and Leon and Percival right. Mordred sticks close to Arthur, Emrys behind them, and they approach in quick silence.

He comes upon them suddenly from behind, after a few minutes, and Mordred spins with dread foremost in his heart, to see a man - withered and wearied, old before his time - staggering towards them, one hand clutched loosely at where dark blood is quickly staining his tunic.

"Stop!" Arthur cries, but Osgar continues, heedless, and Mordred extends his sword, conscious of Emrys at his back.

"Sire, my name is Osgar-"

"I know who you are."

Osgar catches his breath for a moment, struggling against his words. "I am sent from the sacred Disir to pass judgement on Arthur Pendragon, The Once And Future King."

For a second, Mordred catches, stunned into silence. Then, he rallies himself. "What right have you to pass judgement?" he demands, voice cold.

"No man is above the Disir," Osgar says, looking directly at him, and suddenly Mordred has the distinct sense of being judged himself. "However royal." He turns back to Arthur. "It is my duty to pass their judgement onto you, Dread King. My sacred duty."

He reaches into his cloak and Mordred moves without thinking, expecting a knife. Instead, the man produces a small golden coin, some kind of token, inlaid at the edges with small-carved runes. They remind Mordred faintly of Druid-script, and he tries to turn his head subtly to read them, but they are too indistinct, a little different from the writing he is used to, and covered by Osgar's fingers.

"Your hand, Arthur Pendragon."

Kneeling at the King's feet, the sorcerer lays the judgement upon him.

"It is done."

"What is the meaning of this?"

"It is both judgement and fate," Osgar says, and a sickness courses through Mordred's chest. "You have waged war on the people of the Old Religion. Now the Ancient Gods answer you. The Disir have spoken. The circle of fate begins to close. For even as Camelot flowers, the seeds of her destruction are being sown." His eyes dart to Mordred, for just a moment, and he tightens the grip on his sword. Under his fingers, through the bloodstained leather, the steel is cold.

They bury the man quickly, Mordred working with Emrys as Arthur goes to find the others. Mordred goes to wash his hands in a nearby stream, feeling unaccountably dirty, and returns to find Merlin crouched by the fresh grave, stacking stones above it in a cairn.

"What would the King say?" The words come from his mouth so easily, like honey dripping off his tongue. "Sorcerers are not permitted marked graves."

Merlin stands, and turns as Mordred approaches. "It's all right, Emrys. I'd have done the same. He was one of us, after all."

Mordred looks down at the grave, and Emrys stands with him, for a long moment. "It won't always be like this. One day we will live in freedom again."

The words unveil an ancient sorrow in his heart, and suddenly he finds himself near to tears. He searches for a lie in Emrys's face, but there is none. "You really believe that?"

"I do."

Mordred lets out a breath. Looks back at the grave, with a heavy heart. "Until then, we go unmarked in death, as in life." He turns to Emrys, and smiles. It does not reach his eyes.

That evening, Arthur proposes a toast to Mordred's first successful mission, and though the other Knights seem joyful, Mordred can feel Emrys's discontent lapping at the edges of his mind. He too is sombre: he does not sleep well that night, troubled by dreams of sword and spear and lancing pain rending him in two. He rubs at the shoulder that bears his Druid mark for all the long ride back to the city.

When, on the fourth morning after they return, he is woken early by the movement of other Knights in the barracks, he rises quickly and goes to tack Glenside without even thinking. Petitioning Arthur to let him join them is not easy, but the King relents before Mordred can think of reaching for his mind, and he mounts up. Glenside snorts and tosses her head, and he soothes her without thinking, winding one hand idly through her mane and allowing the familiar motion to calm him too.

They come within sight of the white mountains by that evening, after a long, hard ride, and something aches deep in Mordred's chest as he lays out his bedroll on a crop of exposed rock. The next day, they move on further, and by noon come in sight of the grove at Brineved. With a pat on her neck, Mordred leaves Glenside with the other horses, and they proceed on foot, following the echo of the spring through the woods. More than once, Mordred has to redirect one of the others who has gone astray - unlike him, some of them are unused to tracking through trees and rocks, round inclines and up jagged slopes. Years in the valley have taught Mordred the best way to find flowing water, and he locates the spring with little difficulty. From there, they climb.

It's not long before Mordred spots hanging-charms tied to the branches of trees above, followed quickly by the bright colours of prayer-cloths. Instinctively, he thinks of Ise, and his own scraps of green and blue, tied to his upper arm under his clothes, a silent marker of who he is so that this place may recognise him. When they enter the cave, he sends an apology-prayer in his mind to the Triple Goddess for going armed into a holy place, and taps at the arch of the rock for luck as he goes in.

Inside the cave, charms cluster thick and close, and Mordred's heart settles. This is a magic place, a safe place, a cave of faith and belief and courage. Different mountains, true, but it still feels like home. When he sees Percival tug down a charm and step on it, his heart breaks a little.

The corridor opens out into a true cave after a short while, and though it is less hewn than his home, with rocks scattered across the floor, Mordred can nonetheless imagine the curve of tents, the patter of footsteps, the flickers of firelight and laughter. He does not draw his sword. Cannot bear to.

"I am Arthur Pendragon," the King declares, and Mordred despises the words. "I've come to know the meaning of this." He tosses the runemark - the word of the very Gods - carelessly into the dust, and Mordred bites his tongue to keep silent. Tastes blood.

"The grove of Breneved is in the Kingdom of Camelot, subject to its laws, its decrees. Every man, however humble, however noble, has the right to be judged only by his peers, yet you judge me in my absence. Explain yourselves."

And the Disir speak.

"We do not judge."

"We do not condemn."

"We are but the internuncio of the one who presides over all."

"Who sees all."

"Who knows all."

"The Triple Goddess."

"And you, Arthur Pendragon, have angered her."

"How so?" asks the King, and Mordred wants to weep for his obliviousness. "Have I not been an honourable King? Have I not made Camelot a fair and just kingdom?"

"So much is true."

"But you have denied the Old Religion."

"Dismissed its faith."

"Persecuted its followers."

"Even unto slaughter."

_You would do well to follow your title, Kingslayer_ , and Mordred nearly stumbles at the shock. He cannot hear Arthur's words over the Disir's voice in his head, urging him. _There will be no dawn for magic under a Pendragon. No dawn for you, and you will live your days a false Knight led by a false King, chained by his-_

"-arrogance."

"Conceit."

" _Insolence_."

"Enough!" Gwaine cries, stepping forth, and Mordred tenses. "You speak of the King!"

One of the Disir tosses him backwards, and Arthur yells, "On me!" Mordred's hand goes to his sword, but before he can draw, a spear is flying, and he doesn't even think. Just makes a leap of faith.

It hurts, distantly, and he feels the curls of magic grasping at his ribs, the weapon enchanted to fight back against warmongers. But he is a Druid. He reaches, indistinct and wild, for their minds, even as he feels himself being dragged from the cave. _I know your Goddess,_ he says, and can feel them listening. _I love your Goddess. But she is not mine. And I am not hers._

Below him, he feels the soft ground of the forest. Above him, the trees. Valley-green and peaceful. If he has to die anywhere, it should be here, at the heart of the worldmagic, in the embrace of the mountains.

_It's alright, Emrys_ , he says, and feels his fate go still above him. _You get what you wanted. You win._

He lets go.


	18. Threshold

Mordred wakes, very slowly.

He is lying on a bed. Stiffness aches at his muscles, and his joints crackle unhappily as he moves. Rubbing his eyes, he sits up, moving carefully, slowly, and finds himself in the physician's chambers. He glances down and sees bandages wound about his chest, covering his Druid swirl at his right shoulder, but when he pulls them off, his skin is unmarked, utterly uninjured. His prayer-cloths, thankfully, are still tied about his arm. After a moment, he swings his legs over the sit of the bedframe and stands, then moves to retrieve his shirt and cloak from a nearby chair, and pulls then both on. He hesitates for a moment, wondering if he should wait for someone to return - but that could be hours, hours that could be spend in the barracks getting up to speed. After checking that neither his armour nor his sword are anywhere to be seen, he ties his cloak closed, and leaves.

The walk back the barracks is winding, and somewhat long, but it is at least all downwards: the physician's chambers are high up in the castle, and the barracks nestle on the ground floor, just by the training grounds. When he arrives, they are empty, so he goes to his room, where he finds his armour laid out across his bed and his sword and dagger on his pillow. Quickly redressing, he crosses to the small window - a rare luxury most of the rooms are not afforded - and leans on the sill, looking out through the open frame. In the centre of the courtyard below him, he sees the tree he has known since he came here finally flowering, decorated in pale yellow blossoms. Around the small square, people go about their days, and the chatter of the voices below drift upwards. He stays there for a long while, letting his heart reacquaint itself with the sound of the city. Then, he stands straight, checks his sword, and leaves his small room, closing the door behind him.

The mess-room, when he goes to it, is spread with plates of mostly-eaten food, so it must just be past the midday meal. He takes a clean plate from one end and loads it with what is left: bread, hard cheese, some vegetables. Once his growling stomach is sated, he deposits his plate on the pile for the kitchen, and heads out to the training grounds.

As soon as he steps outside, he spots Gwaine and Lancelot sparring nearby, exchanging half-hearted blows. Lancelot spins, parries high, then catches sight of Mordred and stills, yelping as Gwaine lands a blow against his arm. Suddenly self-conscious, Mordred smiles and gives him a small wave. Lancelot sheathes his sword and pushes past Gwaine, he pauses and turns, and then Mordred is caught in an embrace as Lancelot swings him up into the air with little difficulty. A moment later, Gwaine is at his side, slapping him heartily on the back.

After a few moments, they release him. "Mordred!" Lancelot exclaims, a wide grin across his face. "You've recovered!"

"Evidently," he says, smiling, and pulls Gwaine in for a proper embrace. "Though I feel as though I were never injured in the first place." He releases Gwaine, and spots Percival and Leon making their way over from the other side of the field. "What happened at the grove?"

Gwaine glances to Lancelot, then back to Mordred. "Well... we left. Merlin said you would die if you were not returned to the city."

Mordred frowns. "So no accord was reached with The Disir?"

"Arthur and Merlin set out again for the grove three days past. You've been asleep for nearly a week, Mordred."

Mordred pauses for a second, surprised, then rallies himself. "That would explain why I feel so stiff," he jokes, and to his relief, smiles break out across everyone's faces as Leon and Percival reach them. Percival embraces Mordred, and Leon ruffles his hair, which has been unbraided and let loose sometime while he was sleeping.

"I'm sure we can fix that," says Leon, grinning. "It is good to see you back on your feet, Sir Mordred. Though, are you sure you should be out of bed yet?"

"I feel no injury upon me," he begins to protest, but Leon is having none of it.

"Sir Lancelot, kindly escort Sir Mordred back to his room, and make sure he at least takes his armour off. I won't have any of my Knights putting unnecessary strain on themselves while they're still recovering an injury."

Mordred bows his head in assent, feeling oddly protected. "Of course, Sir Leon."

Lancelot accompanies him in polite silence back to his room and helps him remove his mail. Then, he asks if Mordred would take off his shirt so that he can have a look at his shoulder, and Mordred wavers, uncertain. Lancelot crosses his arms. "I know you are modest, Mordred, but you were injured and near death, and it is hard to believe the wound has simply vanished. It is necessity only, or I would not ask."

Mordred searches his face. Finds no word of a lie. Thinks for a moment of Emrys, of a cave, of dying in the mountains, and pulls his shirt over his head.

Lancelot examines his shoulder, then circles around to check his back as well. "May I?" he asks, and Mordred nods, then feels Lancelot's fingers a moment later, gentle at first, then pressing insistently when Mordred does not flinch.

"I spoke the truth, Lancelot. I feel no injury, nor any stiffness or pain that is not explained by spending a week abed rather than training."

"So it would seem," Lancelot murmurs, and steps back. Hastily, Mordred pulls his shirt back on, and turns to leave, but Lancelot catches him by the arm. "Mordred." His face is honest and serious. "I will, of course, say nothing." He pauses. "Also, you may want to put on a thicker shirt." He gestures at the mirror, and glancing over, Mordred notices the faint outline of a black swirl through the thin linen.

"Thank you," he replies quietly, and goes to change.

Sir Leon does not allow him to don his armour or pick up a weapon for the next three days, on Gaius's advisement. The physician says nothing of the Druid mark, but given the court rumours that he was once a sorcerer himself, Mordred is not surprised. When word comes, though, that Emrys and Arthur are returning to the city, Mordred pulls on his mail nonetheless. When Sir Leon protests, Mordred repeats the lecture Leon had once given him about image, and unity, and eventually, Leon relents.

When he comes down the steps into the courtyard, Arthur grins broadly, and immediately embraces him. Despite himself, Mordred smiles at the King, then ducks his head, embarrassed. Behind, he can see Emrys, his gaze fixed on Mordred, somewhere between sorrow and relief. Dinner that night is a joyful affair, with music and laughter, and Mordred retires late, worn-out and smiling.

Four days later, Gaius allows his return to full training, and he wins his first bout with Arthur after an hour of patient exchanges. The King grabs him by the waist and hoists him into the air, while half the Knights who had ended up watching burst into applause. He glances around, and smiles, and thanks the Goddess for protecting him from the Disir, for keeping him so he may keep this.

That evening, Emrys comes to find him. He's in his room, carefully cleaning his fire, when the door creaks open, then shut. He brushes his hands off before he stands, then turns.

"Sir Mordred."

"Emrys. Please, sit."

He does. "I won't interrupt you for long. I was merely hoping to speak with you."

Mordred folds his hands behind his back and inclines his head. "By all means."

"What you said, at the grove." Emrys hesitates. "I didn't- I don't want you dead, Mordred. I did not want it then, and I do not want it now."

"I would not blame you, if you did." Mordred's voice is quiet. Accepting.

"We went back to the grove to treat with the Disir for your life," Emrys continues, obviously unsure how his words will be taken. "They made a demand of Arthur. For you to live, he must return magic to Camelot."

Mordred pauses at that, startled. "Pardon?"

"He asked my counsel." Emrys fixes him with a steady gaze, blue eyes piercing and painfully honest. "I told him he had a duty to save your life, no matter what."

"And... as I yet live..." Mordred starts, hardly daring to believe it.

"The court will convene in two days. He will announce the beginning of the law's repeal then. But I thought you should hear it from me."

Mordred bows his head in deference, unable to respond.

Emrys stands, and moves towards the door. Then stops. "Mordred. What you said. You were wrong. And I do not hate you. This, that is happening now? This is how I get what I wanted. This is how I win. I promised you, before. We will live in freedom again."

Mordred nods. Something dark and ugly that has lived inside his bones since years he could not name begins, slowly, to recede. "Until then."

The door clicks shut quietly behind Emrys as he leaves.

The court assembles, two days later, and Mordred takes his place among the Knights with his heart racing in his chest. He is tucked between Leon and Lancelot, with Gwaine and Percival at his back. The rest of the room is packed with dignitaries and nobles, natives of the city and of surrounding towns alike. At the front of the hall, Arthur stands in full royal regalia, Guinevere likewise crowned and standing beside him. Again a chord of familiarity strikes Mordred, but he cannot place it.

"Lords and Ladies of Camelot," Arthur begins. "Knights, nobles. Friends. I bid you welcome. Many of you are no doubt wondering why you have been summoned here today."

He pauses for a moment, then goes on. "For many years now, Camelot has enjoyed peace and prosperity. I have always worked to make this great kingdom fair and just for all who reside within it. But to move forward, we must address the injustices of the past. Thirty years ago, the Knights of Camelot were the instruments of the Great Purge, a brutal and violent act that saw citizens of this kingdom killed for their practices, for their beliefs." His voice holds perfectly steady, practiced. "This was an atrocity, fueled not by reason but by revenge. Camelot's laws against sorcery have brought strife and suffering to peoples of these lands, and other lands besides, and the anger that has rightfully risen from this mistreatment has led to terrible loss of life among those with magic, and those without."

A ripple of movement begins to go through the room, people shifting in surprise, though there is still silence. At Mordred's side, Lancelot glances to him, and gives him the very smallest of smiles. Mordred returns it, dipping his head. When Arthur speaks again, it is with all the conviction of a King. "This state of matters cannot endure. It is for this reason that I am henceforth ordering the repeal of the ban on the practice of magics, enchantments and sorcery, and all associated practices and beliefs, within the lands of Camelot." He takes a breath. "Make no mistake. Those who misuse power will be punished, as they always are. There is no justification for cruelty, for subjugation, for harm, and those who use magic for these ends will be punished. But we cannot continue to punish people for harmless beliefs. For harmless practices. For the nature with which they were born."

Lancelot takes Mordred's hand and squeezes twice, gentle comfort, as Arthur speaks again. "We pride ourselves on welcoming all who wish to live here. If Camelot wishes to welcome her people, then Camelot must embrace her magic."


	19. Reunion

Mordred has been sitting atop the roof for a full hour when Lancelot climbs to perch beside him at the summit. To the east, the sun is just cresting the horizon. Lancelot is dressed not in Knight's regalia but a simple shirt and breeches: Mordred is likewise clad only in brown trousers and a thin blue shirt, just enough to disguise the swirl of black ink underneath.

"Everything is going to change now," Lancelot muses. "For all of us."

"We can only hope so."

Lancelot wraps an arm around Mordred's shoulders, and Mordred does the same. Together, they sit and watch the sunrise.

The signing of the repeal takes place on a warm day. A festival is declared, to mark the beginning of a new era, and Mordred spends the days in the lower town markets, dressed in unassuming clothes, enjoying the celebrations. By the third day, he catches sight of small magic shows through the city. He watches for a while at the stall of a lady summoning butterflies and ribbons into the air, and tips her generously. When she's packing up, a pair of large men begin to approach her, and Mordred hastens to get nearby. They call her a witch, and a few more unsavoury words, and when they acccuse her of sedition Mordred steps between them.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" he asks, voice measured and steady, standing straight-backed and upright.

"Get out of here, kid. This ain't your concern," one of them growls.

"Actually," Mordred says with a confidence he doesn't feel, "you were threatening this lady, and as a Knight, any threat against a citizen of Camelot is my business. Leave, and do not threaten her again, or I will arrest you."

The second one grunts. "Likely story. Scram, kid, we won't ask you again."

The first reaches for his belt, and in one fluid motion, Mordred draws his sword and has it at the man's throat. "I said," he repeats, voice deadly quiet, "leave, and do not threaten her again."

One man glances to the other, and then they turn and retreat into the crowd. Mordred sheathes his sword, and turns to the woman. "Are you alright, my lady?" he asks.

"Quite," she replies, a little shaky. "Thank you."

He escorts her home when she asks, and returns to the main streets of the festival with a smile on his face.

By the time the celebrations have ended, summer is upon them, the city warm and glowing gold for long hours each evening. Mordred makes extra patrols even when off-duty, and spends most of his time directing harassment away from sorcerers going about their work. On his way down to the lower town, he gives a polite nod to a man conjuring sparks to smith a tiny, intricate piece of bronze. Once he arrives at his destination, a large building that has been swiftly repurposed into a worship-space, he takes off his cloak, rolls up his sleeves, and begins working alongside the other people already there, helping them weave cleaning spells until the lurid, foot-high slurs on the walls are gone.

He joins them to pray, and when all are done, they speak together for a while. The lady is called Tath, the man Hurin, and though they are not Druid folk, they learned magic in their youth, and returned to Camelot as soon as news of the repeal reached them in Engerd. At the mention of his old home, Mordred startles a little, then asks if any others came from the town: Tath mentions that a few they had known departed around the same time. After that, Mordred visits the temple whenever he can, green prayer-cloth tied into his belt every time.

When the days begin to draw towards their peak, he picks an afternoon when Arthur is engaged in private work, and goes to the King's chambers. He knocks, then enters when bidden.

"Sir Mordred!" Arthur greets cheerfully from his desk, setting down his quill. "What can I do for you?"

Mordred takes a deep breath. "Sire, I have come to request that you grant me a week of time that I might use as my own, over midsummer."

Arthur steeples his hands in front of him. "For what purpose do you need the time, Sir Mordred?"

Leap of faith. "I must make a pilgrimage, my lord. Among my people, it has long been tradition that on one's twenty-first midsummer, one makes pilgrimage to the Cauldron of Arianrhod, which is three days' travel each way from this city."

Arthur frowns. "Your people?"

"I was - am - a Druid, sire."

A long pause of silence. Mordred fixes his gaze on the window just past Arthur's head, not bearing to meet his gaze. Finally, he speaks. "You may have nine days, Sir Mordred. So that you do not need to hurry unnecessarily."

"Thank you, my lord," he says, bowing low.

"And Mordred. Thank you for your honesty."

Mordred straightens up. "Of course, my lord. I would not dishonour myself by denying where I come from when there is no longer any need to."

He's halfway to the door when Arthur speaks again. "Mordred." He turns, and sees Arthur standing, obviously struggling for words. "Can you..." He makes a vague gesture with his hands, face painfully uncertain.

Mordred folds his hands behind his back. "I have precious little power, sire, but all those raised within the Druid faith know something of magic, if that is what you mean to ask."

"Show me?"

Thinking, he raises one hand flat in front of him, palm up, and focuses. After a moment, a small flicker of silver flame bursts into light, swirling and dancing delicately. Arthur watches, transfixed. For a moment, he holds it, then casts it into the air, where it curls into a Druid swirl, then dissipates.

After a moment of delicate, still silence, Mordred hesitantly bows his head, then lets himself out of the room.

When he finds Mordred packing the next day, Gwaine demands to know where he is going. Once Mordred explains, briefly, about the pilgrimage and his faith, Gwaine claps him on the shoulder and asks if he can use magic to trip up Sir Lamorak when he's not looking. They laugh together about the idea while Gwaine helps pack food and blankets, but the effortless acceptance soothes Mordred's worry.

On the morning Mordred is bound to leave, he wakes before dawn and dresses in his travelling-clothes. Without the need for concealment any longer, he feels little trepidation and donning clothes in the Druid style he still finds natural and instinctive, so steps into the main room in long, practical robes, his knapsack slung over his shoulders. His sword and dagger are still at his waist, his blue prayer-cloth tied alongside them. Ise's is fluttering at the temple, waiting for her return.

At the end of the table in the main room, Sir Meliant and Sir Tor, neither of whom Mordred has had any cause to know well, are waiting for him. As he enters, closing the door to his room quietly behind him and locking it with a quick flick of his hand, Meliant stands up. "Travelling somewhere, Sir Mordred?"

"Indeed," he replies politely, inclining his head.

Tor stands as well. "Somewhere unpleasant, I hope."

Mordred takes a breath, and eyes the door behind them, wondering whether he can get past without confrontation. "Its pleasantry I could not say, having never been there." He begins to move towards the door, hoping they will stand aside.

They do not. As he moves closer, Tor scowls at him, ugly. "Want to pass, boy?"

"I'll thank you not to address me as boy," Mordred replies evenly. He tries to step forward, and Meliant punches him in the face.

The blow is so unexpected that it sends him reeling backwards, and he slams hard into the table. Tor hits him in the stomach, hard, and he staggers, then falls for a moment, the breath knocked out of him. Meliant delivers a kick to his ribs and he lashes out instinctively, catching the man's ankle with one foot before Tor grabs his other and begins dragging him across the floor. They're halfway to the fire before Mordred wriggles free and scrambles to his feet, bolting for the door out of the barracks. Behind him, Tor's voice echoes down the hallway.

"You're not wanted here, _heretic_!"

At the stables, Mordred takes a moment to steady himself, then leads Glenside out of her stall with nothing more than a hand and a few encouraging words. The stableboy, still yawning with sleep, offers to tack her, but Mordred politely declines, mounting at the block with a gentle hand in her mane. Once he's settled, a nudge of the heels and a click is all it takes to get moving. Without the jangle of stirrups or the whisper of the saddle, it is quiet as he rides southeast out of the citadel and onto the road.

They make it clear of the forest by the first evening, and Mordred settles his bedroll under a large willow by a river. Checking his chest, he finds an ugly spread of purple across his aching ribs, and ghosts a silver hand over them to ease the pain.

After that, he travels across plains liberally dotted with trees, and passes through several small villages, receiving cheerful greetings as he goes. At the third, he spots a young woman with a Druid charm at her neck conversing with a baker. As he passes, he wishes her the blessings of the Goddess, and she offers him luck and speed on his pilgrimage. The shape of the village retreats behind him, nestling into the landscape, and he reties his prayer-cloth at his wrist.

On the morning of the third day, he wakes to a brief rainshower that cools the air and damps his clothes. After the clouds clear, though, the day is bright and temperate, and a light breeze leads their way through the ridge of Ascetir. To be so close to the mountains, winding his way through foothills and valleys that could just as easily be the slopes and ridges of home, sets a melancholic longing in his chest. They come to a river that has stepping-stones laid across it and Mordred briefly dismounts to lead Glenside through the water, feeling for all the world like a child playing in the flats of the stream just beyond the cave mouth.

When they finally break beyond the ridgeline, late in the afternoon, he can see the shape of the water before him. By the time they reach the bottom of the hillside, the sun is relaxing into the line of the horizon, and he goes just far enough to find grass for Glenside before laying out his bedroll and falling asleep.

He wakes later the next day, and allows himself to lie for a short while, gazing up at the blue sky. By midmorning, though, he rouses, and packs away his things, eating a quick breakfast of the bread and cheese he had brought with him, then whistling to pull Glenside from her grazing. They are in the valley now, and the chances she will wander too far for him to catch up are slim, but nonetheless, she has brought him this far. It is her pilgrimage as much as his. She accompanies him on the walk to the water's edge without question.

To his surprise, there is someone already there: a boy who looks to be about Mordred's age is sat on a rock, staring out at the water. He hesitates for a moment, then sets down his knapsack and goes towards the boy, who turns.

Placing a hand over his heart, he bows his head. "May the Goddess bless our meeting."

The boy smiles, and nods in turn. "And may her blessings keep us long in life."

Mordred drops his hand from his chest. "I'm Mordred, and this lady is Glenside. Might I have your name?"

"Ferwin. I suppose you are also here on pilgrimage?" Mordred nods. Ferwin stands, and stretches, then gives Glenside a gentle stroke. "She is very beautiful."

"Indeed," Mordred agrees easily. "Where are you from?"

"Findon." Mordred shakes his head: he doesn't know it. "Small village, near the White Mountains. I've been travelling a week. You?"

"The mountains of Ascetir, originally," Mordred says, "but I came from the city."

That catches Ferwin's attention. "You did?" Mordred nods. "What's it like?"

For a moment, Mordred pauses. Then, choosing his words carefully, he speaks. Warm stone, warm fires, the never-night of the castle. Courtyards and cobbled streets, the noise of a market-square and the quiet of pre-dawn, when the city is just beginning to wake up. Graveyards outside the walls, sorrowful places where mist clings like a blanket, where headstones tell sad stories for the living, and unmarked graves tell sad stories for the dead.

Ferwin seems content to silence when he is done speaking, his eyes faraway and introspective, so Mordred stands and moves away to a flat patch of ground, where he rolls out his bedroll and lays down to get some rest. The light holds so long now, he will not get more than a few hours' sleep, but he will need at least that, to stay waking from dawn to till dusk on midsummer without fail.

When he wakes, it is still light, but as he glances east, the shape of the sun is not yet in the sky. By the brightness, though, it must be drawing close. Not bothering to move his bedroll, he leaves down his sword, and takes off his boots and outer layer so that he is clad only in his long linen robe of deep green. Ferwin is standing by the water's edge, similarly dressed: there are two more who must have arrived while he rested, dotted at other points on the shore. He goes over, and takes his place a goodly distance away. One of the new arrivals gives him a nod. Together, they stand and watch the east. When the first edge of the sun peaks across the horizon, Mordred steps forwards, feeling the chill of the water against his bare feet, wonderfully clean. He moves a few strides in, then sinks to kneeling, so that he is submerged up to his waist. He lays his hands across his knees. The prayer cloth still tied about his wrist is brilliantly blue in the clear water. Once he is settled, he closes his eyes, and reaches for the Goddess.

Dusk comes before he has even noticed the sun setting, and Mordred emerges from the water to the diffuse light of summer evening. He feels clean. New, and settled, and irrevocably changed. Whole. He thinks back to what Elan had once said, years ago, how the pilgrimage made her a new person, and wonders whether he still has any claim to his name. He can feel magic curling about him, dancing and unfurling quietly. The day has passed in a trance, an in-between place, a strange and lovely haze of exaltation. On clumsy feet, he moves towards where Glenside is waiting patiently, and embraces her. Then, a scrape of feet on pebbles comes from a short distance away, and he turns to see a figure he had not noticed while he was caught in his head.

"May the Goddess bless our meeting."

He places one hand over his chest, and dips his head as she moves towards him. "And may her blessings keep us long in life." He pauses, then. He is a new person, is he not? "I am Mordred, Druid of the city of Camelot." She smiles, and without hesitation, Mordred steps forwards and embraces Ise.

"You came," he says, voice muffled and shaky with tears.

"You didn't think I'd forget my brother's pilgrimage?" she replies, releasing him. In the ethereal light of the evening, she appears in shades of reverent gold. "It's so good to see you again kid."

They sleep as they once did, on the road between mountains and towns, somewhere between past and future, with hands caught together in silent comfort. Mordred dreams of a small room with two beds, of a tavern always bursting with warmth and light, of kitchen fires and the smell of cooking food. A once-was home.

In the morning, such as it is, Mordred wakes to find Ise examining the things she has packed in her bag. She smiles at him as he sits up. "Ready to get going."

"I- I can't come with you. I must return to the city."

She chuckles. "Obviously. I'm coming with you."

"But- Engerd?"

She shrugs. "It was home, and then it wasn't. I've been waiting to leave for a long time, and I heard the news. The ban is gone?" He nods. She closes her bag, and he gets up, rolling up his bedroll. "Then I will go where you lead." She holds out a hand. "Shall we?"

He takes it with a smile. "Goddess, but I have missed you."

The journey home is pleasant: they walk most of the way, Glenside following alongside them and nuzzling at Ise every now and again, whilst Mordred tells her about life in the city. Ise, in exchange, brings news of Engerd, of its quiet consistency, and her work, cooking and cleaning and doing all the things they once did together. Mordred listens to her talk about all the people he used to know with a dull ache in his chest. Then, he remembers how the town felt in his last days there, and it recedes. The mountains raised him and Engerd sheltered him, but the city has known him more closely, loved him more fiercely, held him more dearly.

When they arrive, passing through the gates, Ise looks around in naked, childlike wonder at the wide streets, at the calls of the market off to the left, at the people hurrying up and down the roads all about them. With a gentle hand, Mordred leads Glenside up the main road, towards the gate to the upper town, where he shows his Knight's seal and is promptly let through.

They arrive in the citadel without thoroughfare, plainly dressed as Mordred is, and he shows Ise the royal stables with a little pride fluttering in his chest. She moves from stall to stall in turn as he stables Glenside. Once he's done, she comes back over, smiling. "You really made something for yourself, kid."

Mordred ducks his head. "I try my best."

As they enter the castle, he offers an arm, which she takes with some amusement, and he leads her on the most pleasant route to the barracks, the one that shows the vaulted ceilings and the stained glass but also ducks through the servant's kitchens, where he pauses for a moment to speak to a girl he knows, Alex, and ask after the health of her mother. Once he's told her to pass along his blessings, he opens the door that leads into the main room of the barracks, and steps through, Ise following a moment behind.

The room is thankfully quiet, though Mordred immediately spots Gwaine and Lancelot engaged in some kind of discussion at one end of the second table. Mordred loads a plate with food, and gestures for Ise to do the same as he sits. She takes a seat beside him, stealing a slice of bread as she does so, and fills a plate of her own.

"Good to see you again, Mordred," Gwaine says, clapping Mordred on the shoulder as he sits across from them. "I trust all went well?"

Mordred nods. "Indeed, aside from a short delay on the morning of my departure."

At those words, Gwaine scowls, and Lancelot cuts in, "And who might this be?"

Ise puts down her slice of bread on Mordred's plate, and extends a hand. "I am Ise, Mordred's sister. Charmed to meet you."

Lancelot takes it, bowing his head as much as he can while sitting. "I am Lancelot, my lady, and this is Gwaine. Welcome to the city."

They stay, eating and talking, until a stream of Knights begin to arrive in from the training field, at which point Gwaine mentions that two of the number have departed recently and if she so wishes, Ise could stay in one of their rooms. One is halfway across the hall, but the other is only one door down from Mordred's, so he recommends that one. He does note whose rooms they are, though, and once Ise has settled her things and gone out to the upper town to explore and try to find work, Mordred pulls Leon off to one side of the room and asks, in low tones, where Sir Meliant and Sir Tor have gone.

"Merlin was unhappy with them, though why I could not say," Leon explains, as though that covers everything.

"How do his feelings influence whether they remain in Camelot or not?"

"Well, I'd imagine he spoke with the King, and whatever his reasoning was the King saw fit to remove them," Leon suggests. "Though Gwaine seemed mightily displeased with them, also. You missed quite a performance: in training the day you left, he beat both of them at the same time quite handily."

"Thank you, Sir Leon," Mordred murmurs, hand pressing against the yellowed bruises that still wind across his ribs. Absently, he wonders whether Emrys really would go to such lengths on his behalf and on Gwaine's word, or if there was another reason he wanted the two gone.

He does not have to wonder for very long, though, because it is only a week - spent making up his missed time and helping Ise find work and accommodation, at the temple in the lower town - before Emrys comes to find him.

It's just after training, and Mordred has sunk somewhat gracelessly into the grass at the edge of the square, resisting the urge to dump his waterskin over his head instead of drink it, when Emrys comes over. Mordred sits up as Emrys exchanges a few friendly words with Percival and Leon, then moves over to Mordred as the two depart. He sits down next to him, and after a moment, Mordred offers him the skin. Emrys waves it away.

"So you took pilgrimage to the Cauldron of Arianrhod," he says without preamble, just when Mordred has begun to wonder what he's there for.

"How did you-"

"Gwaine told me." Emrys glances over. "Just as he told me what he overheard in the main barracks room, the morning you left."

"If you were responsible for the dismissal of Sir Tor and Sir Meliant, I assure you that I needed no help with the matter," Mordred responds, a little wounded.

"And I assure you that I do not want you hurt, Sir Mordred, though it seems you will not believe me," Emrys replies heatedly. He pauses, then, and takes a breath. "Forgive me. I did not mean to start a fight. I came to ask a boon." Mordred gestures for him to go on, but Emrys takes a moment to collect himself nonetheless, clearly choosing his words carefully. "It has been my - personal custom, for some years now, to take a pilgrimage of a sort myself. Not religious, you understand, but. My beloved, as she once was, passed some years ago, and I visit her resting place. I was wondering if - you would care to accompany me."

Mordred bows his head, humbled. "It would be my honour, Emrys."

"The King will be accompanying us also," Emrys adds, voice completely flat. "In case that affects your decision."

"If you wish for me to be by your side for this journey," Mordred says, measuring his words, "I will accompany you no matter what."

Emrys looks at him. "I am not your God," he says, sharply.

"No," Mordred agrees. "But I would like to be your friend."

Emrys is silent for a long moment, long enough that Mordred begins to think he will not reply. He stands up, and picks up his training things. When he is a few steps towards the barracks though, he hears Emrys's voice from behind him. "I would like that also, Sir Mordred. Very much."

He glances back, and gives Emrys a smile.


	20. Finality

In the month that follows, he spends time with Emrys as often as is possible. Emrys shows him the secrets of the castle he has not yet discovered, tells him about the corners of the court one can see as a servant. Hesitantly, Mordred asks about stories he has heard, of creatures of magic, and Emrys confirms tales of dragons and beasts, monsters and men alike. He tells Mordred, in hushed tones, about Lancelot's arrival to Camelot, about the griffin, and how Lancelot has been the only one to know of his magic for many years, besides Gaius. He mentions, offhandedly, that he suspects Guinevere knows, though they have not spoken of it: they were friends when she was a serving girl and not a Queen, and he a manservant and not confidante of the King. Emrys speaks fondly of those days.

In return, Mordred gives Emrys stories of his youth, of Druids and the forest and mountains. He mentions Kara briefly, but Emrys, perhaps sensing the soreness of the subject, does not push. He mentions herbs and healing, hiding and hoping. When Emrys asks, he explains about faith: the Silver Goddess, and her love of all the Druids; the Green Lady, Goddess of the wilds and all that grows; the Triple-Goddess, who cares only for magic and is fickle and vindictive in all else.

After a few weeks, Emrys begins to accompany Mordred to the temple, where he speaks quietly with Ise while Mordred prays. More and more come, now, and Mordred finds himself breaking up fights between sorcerers and common folk less and less. The city, it seems, has found some kind of balance. He and Emrys have as well.

On quiet days, when Mordred is calm and Emrys is willing, they discuss destiny. Such discussions remain in the abstract in some ways, for talking of his own fate clamps a band of cold iron fear at Mordred's throat, but Emrys talks of his future that he has felt weighing on him for years in hushed, reverent words, and Mordred understands. Better than anyone, he understands.

It is the beginning of autumn, only a few days before Lughnasadh and the start of harvest season, when Emrys informs Mordred he will be departing the following morning. Mordred finds Sir Leon and is easily excused from two week's duties, then goes to pack. At dawn, he meets Emrys in the courtyard, and brings Glenside and Llamrei from the stables. The King arrives a short while later, dressed in plain clothes. He nods to Mordred, stiff and formal, then goes to the stable. Emrys follows Mordred's gaze, confused. "I thought you and Arthur got on well?"

Mordred sighs. "I fear he has much to learn yet of magic, and of forgiveness. He has been distant with me since I took pilgrimage. I suspect he feels lied to."

"He has little right to feel so," Emrys says, bitterly, "when it is his laws that had forced your lies."

To hear Emrys speak ill of the King is unusual, but Mordred bites his tongue and says nothing. Arthur returns after a few minutes with his own horse, Kirrin, and they mount up quickly, departing from the city without delay. Emrys leads them west with quiet certainty, and Mordred rides at his side, the King a short distance behind the two of them. Emrys is solemn, and seems melancholy, but he asks Mordred about the Druid practice of pilgrimage to Arianrhod with genuine interest in his voice, so Mordred explains about the Silver Goddess, and how the Cauldron is said to be the place in all of Albion where her presence can be felt most closely. When Arthur next speaks, asking about directions, Mordred can hear the irritation in his voice, but cannot bring himself to care. He owes his life to magic, in more ways than one, and he cannot renounce it.

They pass through the valley that is the only route through the white mountains, and Mordred thinks of the grove at Breneved and a cave that felt so achingly like home. Here, they ride across a narrow plain, with a lake in the middle that they camp next to on the third night. Emrys lays his bedroll nearby to Mordred's, and Arthur sleeps on the opposite side of the fire.

On the fourth day, Emrys speaks unprompted, telling Mordred about the lady he now goes to grieve for. Freya. How she had been so lovely. So selfless. Magical, and magic herself. Bright and kind, loyal and honest. Mordred listens to the words as though a sacred confession, and says nothing. It is not his place to speak, when gifted with such a secret.

It is midmorning on the fifth day when they reach the shores of Avalon. Mordred drops back at first, uncertain, but Emrys turns and wordlessly beseeches him, and without a sound Mordred dismounts and comes forward to the water's edge. Quietly, Emrys takes Mordred's hand in his, and Mordred squeezes back comfortingly. They stay there for a long while, Mordred by Emrys's side. Then, Emrys lets go of his hand, and Mordred, taking the cue, steps back and away from the shoreline to sit with Arthur, while Emrys kneels by the water's edge, and begins to murmur quiet, indistinguishable words.

The King glances over at Mordred as he sits. "You are very close to Merlin," he comments, voice carefully neutral.

"He is my friend," Mordred replies, equally level. "I owe him a great deal. It seemed the least I could do, to give my company when asked."

Arthur gazes at the lake for a long moment. "It has ever seemed strange to me, that he should have loved one so fiercely whom I had never known. He told me nothing of her, either, even when he asked me to accompany him."

Mordred looks over at that. "You had not come with him before?"

"No, though he has made this journey every year since her passing." Arthur ducks his head. "I used to think... but that is gone now, anyway."

Mordred follows his line of sight, to where Emrys sits by the water's edge. "You loved him." Not a question.

Arthur sighs. "And he returned it. But that was long ago, and then there was Guinevere. I do not believe he has loved me in many years. And besides, it seems he has found other men to warm his bed," he says, a little bitterly.

Mordred bristles. "Whatever may be said, I am not courting him. And if I may be so bold as to speak freely, it is hardly your business whose bed he frequents when it is no longer your own. The people you love do not belong to you." He takes a breath, and finds he is not done. "Whatever resentment you may have towards me, I banish it. I lied for my own protection, and no other reason. Whether you care for me or not, and whatever destiny may intend for me, I do not belong to you either, Arthur, and I do not owe you my loyalty above my own life. I am my own, and I may keep myself as such."

Arthur looks taken aback, and regards him for a long moment, then stands abruptly and walks away. Mordred watches him go along the bank of the lake, then turns back to where Emrys is still knelt, talking quietly to the water. Slowly, Mordred kneels, centres himself, and begins to pray.

Arthur returns a few hours later, as the afternoon is curling lazily into early evening, and though he has an odd stiffness to his walk, Mordred thinks little of it. Emrys has shifted to sitting basket-legged by the water's edge, and has lapsed into silence, a calm and steady peace about him like a shield. Mordred stands and shakes himself a little as Arthur moves towards him. Then Arthur draws his sword and Mordred ducks on instinct as he swings.

He lets out a high-pitched yelp and sees Emrys turn out of the corner of his eye, then draws his own blade to parry a second swing that comes for his left side. Arthur growls, and shoves him hard, sending him stumbling a few steps, but Mordred catches himself and raises his guard as Arthur bears down upon him, delivering blow after blow that Mordred blocks. The King's face is twisted in rage, and Mordred swears he sees a red glow to his eyes as he ducks under a slash that cuts his tunic and slices painfully over his chest. Emrys stumbles backwards, radiating shock, and Arthur looses his footing for a second on the pebbled beach. Mordred presses the sudden advantage to send Arthur back a few steps, but the King recovers and cuts at Mordred's leg, sending him stumbling to one knee. Grinning, Arthur bears down towards him, sword outstretched, and with a last effort, Mordred surges upwards and catches the incoming swing even as he sends the tip of his own blade into Arthur's chest.

Arthur stumbles, then falls, and a bright blue light sparks suddenly out of his eyes, and with a start Mordred recognises the flight of a Sidhe. He withdraws, and Arthur collapses to the shore, blood spilling in noble red from the wound. Mordred drops his sword, then presses his hands to the injury. A moment later, Emrys is beside him, kneeling to help, but Mordred can already tell it is too late. Arthur is pale and his clothes are soaked and _Mordred did this_. He goes to withdraw but Arthur catches him by the wrist.

"I'm sorry," he chokes out, his voice mangled by blood and pain. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a ring of elegant silver, and Mordred recognises it as the Royal Seal. He presses it clumsily onto Mordred's finger, and Mordred accepts it. "Take it back... take it back to Guinevere."

"Of course," Mordred says, his own voice thick with sudden tears.

Arthur turns his face to Emrys, and Mordred has to weep for the grief that is there. "I'm sorry, Merlin," Arthur says, his voice a harsh whisper.

"It's alright," Emrys replies, and through tears Mordred sees him take Arthur's hand. "I forgive you."

Everything goes still.

They bury him in the lake, in a boat that Emrys sets aflame as it passes into the water, towards the distant isle. They stand, side-by-side, and watch as it disappears into the mist, swallowed up by the world. Silent tears track down Emrys's cheeks, and Mordred too is crying, but his heart feels hatefully light.

It is done.

It is over.

Emrys catches him as he goes back towards the horses, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Mordred," he says, and his voice is thick and heavy with the weight of grief. "This was not your fault."

Mordred takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I know," he says, and believes it.


	21. Absolution

The journey back is slow.

Emrys leads Arthur's horse alongside his own. Mordred cannot bear to ride Glenside, and walks beside her instead, a hand hooked into her bridle, seeking comfort. At first, he tries to trail a short distance behind, but Emrys looks back without judgement and asks Mordred to walk beside him. Mist curls at their feet as they pass slowly back through the valley. Glenside, sensing his melancholy, comforts him as best she can. They pass the mountains, the fog recedes, and Mordred finally mounts back up. Emrys seems to hold no resentment, as they speed to a trot, but Mordred cannot stop thinking of his mother, smiling at him when he said he would never kill their chance at peace. The man who had been good enough to befriend Emrys is gone, now, and when they lay down their bedrolls at night, Mordred cannot bear to cross the distance between them.

Autumn follows them back to the city, and even as they pass through the western forest it begins to shed its first leaves. They pass up to the citadel unharried, and Mordred dismounts to lead Glenside to the stables, then realises the Royal Seal is still on his finger where Arthur had put it. Hastily, he takes it off, and curls his hand into a fist around the silver ring, then returns to the courtyard, where Emrys is waiting.

"I must speak to Gwen," he says, and to his horror Mordred feels tears welling up again. On the road, the reality of things had fallen away from him, but here, he feels hemmed in by the stone. Wordlessly, he offers Emrys the Seal, and Emrys takes it with a look of sorrow on his face.

"I am sorry, Emrys," Mordred forces out, the words sticking in his throat. "If I could trade my place..."

"But you cannot. And you should not."

"I swore an oath. To lay down my life for the protection of Camelot."

"Yes," Emrys agrees. "And a King in the thrall of a Sidhe is no future at all. You did your duty. Let me do mine."

Mordred bows his head in acceptance. "I will take vigil in the training square, if the Queen wishes to sentence me herself."

Emrys catches his hand, before he goes. Pulls him close. Mordred tries to look down, but Emrys lays a gentle hand on either side of his jaw, and tilts his head up to look into his eyes. "You are my friend, Mordred," he murmurs, and pulls him into an embrace, tight and close. Mordred closes his eyes and allows himself to embrace Emrys back. Something deep in his chest settles, and is still.

He moves to the barracks slowly. With numb hands, he strips and changes into black mourning robes. When he glances at his sword, a sob tears through his chest and he drops to his knees as he weeps. His breath comes in ragged gasps, tugging its way out from under his ribs like a phantom pain, like a memory, like a blade he has never known.

Eventually, the sobbing subsides into quiet tears. He stands, stills for a moment, and leaves the room. When he arrives, the training-square is empty, and he selects a patch of grass near the far edge. He has seen more than a few folk take public vigil in his time here, for their grief or the sickness of a loved one, and has always noted the custom, so he knows what to do. Sinking to his knees in the cold dirt, he folds his hands into his lap, left over right. His fingers are still dirty with road-grime and muck, but for a thin strip around the middle finger of his right hand, where a band of grey had protected him on his ride back to this executioner's cage, this city tying itself about his neck as a noose.

He wonders whether he will be the last sorcerer to hang in Camelot.

He stays, first still, then shivering with cold, for three days and two nights. A few of the Knights bring him water at regular intervals, as is custom, but otherwise he is undisturbed. The first night is dry, but on the second afternoon rain comes down fast and heavy, and by the time the moon rises he is kneeling in thick mud, black robes stained brown in the filth. He dozes in fits and starts, never quite falling asleep. Never quite letting the burden fall from his shoulders.

On the third morning, he sees a procession of candle-bearers over the wall, moving from the town into the courtyard of the citadel, and knows why they go. He hears echoes from the great hall all through that morning. "Long live the Queen," he murmurs, and digs his fingernails into his palms.

A heavy storm front begins to set in by midday, and the air grows bitterly cold. When his teeth start chattering, he begins praying, first in his head, then out loud, words lost under the roll of thunder. His words do little to block out the aching silence. The King is dead, and all have gone to grieve him. Mordred is alone.

It is evening again when he sees the lamp-glow of someone approaching. For a moment, he examines his own shadow, caught in melancholy, before his hesitant visitor speaks.

"I beg forgiveness for disrupting your vigil, but if you would be willing, I wish to speak to you."

He finally unclasps shaking hands, rolls his shoulders, then rocks back onto his feet. His joints crackle and settle as he stands, reacquainting himself with the movement of stiff limbs, before he turns and bows. "Of course, my lady," he replies, keeping his eyes carefully fixed on the hem of the Queen's gown.

"Just Guinevere is fine, Sir Mordred," she assures.

"Then you must call me Mordred, my lady Guinevere." He stands up straight. "Please lead on."

She examines him for a moment, then strides past and begins to lead towards the path back to the citadel courtyard, rather than into the barracks where she must have come from. Silently, Mordred follows.

He accompanies her back up the main steps and into the hall, then up two more flights of stairs until they come to a small set of chambers in a quiet corner of the east wing. The Queen holds open the door, and Mordred ducks his head as he steps inside. The room is small, but cozy: a large fire crackles contentedly in a brick hearth at the centre, illuminating two wide windows and a table about which six comfortable-looking chairs are arranged. Two doors are set into one wall, presumably leading to further rooms, but both are closed. Guinevere lets the door slide shut behind her with a quiet click. She moves to sit at the table, but Mordred remains standing, not wishing to impose. After a moment, she sighs, and leans forwards.

"Mordred, if I may speak plainly, you look as though you can barely keep your eyes open. I have it on good authority you have neither eaten nor rested since you returned to the city, and I would rather you not collapse while I am conversing with you. These are my chambers, you need not worry about dirtying the furniture. Please, sit."

Abashed, Mordred sinks into the nearest chair, trying to keep straight-backed and resist the urge to melt into it and close his eyes. "I apologise, my lady, I-"

"Guinevere," she repeats, more insistently this time.

"Guinevere," he amends. "I had assumed that any sentence to be given would be swift." He keeps his eyes fixed on his hands as he speaks, still folded on the table. Right over left.

"Mordred," Guinevere says. "Please look at me." He does so, and her face is a mix of worry and contrition. "I did not call you to sentence you. Merlin spoke to me. You have committed no crime and thus you shall receive no punishment."

"He spoke to you, when he returned?" Guinevere nods. "He told you what transpired at Avalon?"

She nods again. "He did. A Sidhe, a creature of powerful and obscure magic, enchanted Arthur, and drove him to violence against you. You drew your sword and defended yourself, while Merlin tried and failed to break the Sidhe's hold with his own magic." Her voice is earnest. "It is never a crime to defend one's own life against another who tries to take it."

"I should have tried to break the enchantment," Mordred says, voice wobbling horrendously. "Or I should have protected my King, as I swore to do."

"You did protect your King," Guinevere says, and Mordred looks at her in confusion. She smiles, a tentative thing. "I'm sure it is known to you that before I married Arthur, I was a servant here. I grew up in the lower town. I had a brother, during those days. Elyan. He was sweet and kind and I loved him very dearly, but he never fit in well. Never felt at home in the city. He always seemed at odds, with the world and with himself. Twenty-two years ago, when I was just a child, Elyan left Camelot, the very same night a young girl miraculously escaped from a cell in the citadel. I never saw him again."

She pauses for a moment, but Mordred simply looks back, still confused. "Twenty-two years ago, a young Druid girl was accompanied to a Druid camp by a woman who had left her life behind. The girl was taken in, and the woman passed onwards and eastwards, to the mountains, where she took a new name, and started a new family." Mordred stills suddenly, as the pieces start to come together. "Three days ago, a woman in Druid clothes arrived in the citadel, looking for you. News had only reached her a short while before that the ban on magic had been lifted, you see. She'd left the mountains at once, to come to the city, to find her son." Guinevere pauses again, an unsteady smile on her face, something between grief and elation. "I happened to be in the courtyard at the time. Never would there be a world where I did not recognise that voice, that face. Elan she may be rather than Elyan, but she is my sister now as surely as she was ever my brother."

Mordred's hand goes to his mouth involuntarily, and he stutters out a mangled mess of half-phrases through his fingers. After a moment, he rallies himself. "Elan, my... my mother?"

"It will interest you to know, I am sure, that besides my sister, I have no other living relatives." She smiles affectionately. "As I said, Mordred. You did protect your King."

"My lady?"

Guinevere reaches across the table, and lays one hand atop his own. "I have spoken with Elan at some length. She has no interest in inheriting anything from me. In all your time in Camelot, you have been honest and forthright, fair and moderate in thought and conduct. You have no obligation, Mordred, but if you want it, the succession of Camelot now falls to you."

"I am a Druid." The words fall from his lips without thinking. "A sorcerer. A charlatan."

"And I am a blacksmith's daughter," Guinevere replies, quirking her lips. "I have long thought that Camelot needs a little less of royalty and a little more of ordinary people." She shifts for a moment in her chair. "My husband, Mordred, was a complicated man. I know you had a bond with him, and I would not attempt to sully his memory by speaking ill of the dead, but there is - there was - much about him that is not widely known. He was arrogant in his youth, and carried some of that still as King. Brash, bold, quick to action and impulsive in thought, and when driven to anger, his cruelty matched Morgana's in intent, if not ferocity." She sighs. "May he rest in peace, my father died at the hand of a Pendragon."

"My blessings on his spirit," Mordred replies automatically, then flushes, embarrassed. "Forgive me, I did not mean to interrupt."

"It's quite alright, Mordred. You may speak as you will." Guinevere stands abruptly, and stretches, moving around to lay her arms across the back of her chair, a contemplative expression on her face. "I married Arthur because, naive and idealistic as I was, I believed I could change him. Believed I could better him. But he lived his life in a palace, taught by the coin and the blade and the crown, and never truly learned how to grow up. I loved my husband. I love him still. But I do not grieve him."

For a long moment, Mordred is silent. Then, searching for words, he begins to speak. "After I spoke the truth of myself... he changed towards me." He swallows. "Became more distant. More callous. Less friend, and more critic. I often wondered if the only way he would ever truly care for me would be if I were to carry the lie for ever. And," at this he pauses for a moment, then continues on, "I am given to understand that others felt the same."

"Merlin?" Mordred nods, after a moment's hesitation. "I have spoken with him also: I knew, or rather suspected, of his gifts for many years. We served alongside each other a great deal in our former days, and in such time I saw too many strange things to remain ignorant. I kept his secret all this time, and bore no resentment nor ill will for as long. I have no hatred for magic." Her voice hardens for a moment. "I have known the cruelty of Uther, and of Camelot's tyranny against the Old Religion. I cannot pretend that I do not understand those who sought Camelot's end because of the suffering such treatment had brought to them. Arthur changed the law, it is true, but he was never to be a champion of sorcerers."

"He said as much?" Mordred asks, despite himself.

Guinevere shakes her head. "He did not need to. As I said before. I knew a great deal of Arthur which none other, save perhaps Merlin, was privy to. There was too much of his father in him."

Mordred bows his head, suddenly overwhelmed with shame. "There are no words that I can say that will make right what I have wronged, but I would give any nonetheless. I can only apologise with all of myself for what I have done." Exhaustion pulls at his bones, and silent tears spill unbidden from his eyes.

"Those words alone are enough to right any wrong you may have done, though I would swear again that you have committed none. I forgive you and absolve you nonetheless." She looks at him kindly. "For now, though, there is an empty sleeping chamber next door. We can speak further in the morning, once you have eaten and restored your energy, but for now, you must rest."

Too tired to speak longer, Mordred goes without protest, and near-collapses into the bed, barely pulling the covers about himself before he sinks into the comfort of sleep, and belonging.

He dreams of a wide forest, soft green around a white city, high peaks curving elegantly against the clouds. To the east, over the silver mountains, the sun rises, a warm and brilliant gold.


	22. Epilogue

He stands, feet set slightly apart, at the top of the stone steps, as the ambassadorial party rolls into the courtyard. Before him, the Queen is poised tall and regal, a deep blue cloak draped around her: on Mordred's advice, she has opted for a plain mode of dress. Likewise, Emrys, standing at her right side a few steps back, is clad in unassuming clothes. Mordred has chosen a long, deep red robe that falls to his mid-calf, cinched at the waist with a simple leather belt. A black Druid swirl has been painted carefully onto the back of his right hand.

The group that now comes to a halt is small: three women, and behind them, one man. Each is dressed plainly, modestly, in loose robes reminiscent of Mordred's own. The leader of their group is one of the women, tall and slim, fair-skinned, with brown hair. Mordred shifts nervously as she approaches the Queen.

"We come from our home to forge new bonds with you and your court, on behalf of all the Druid peoples of Camelot, who desire only peace and good lives."

The Druid leader extends her hand, and without hesitation, the Queen takes it. "And we, the people of Camelot, do humbly welcome you, and hope that these discussions will lead to a greater understanding between us, and begin to do justice for Camelot's many crimes against your people." The Druid leader bows her head, clearly satisfied. "I am Queen Guinevere of Camelot. This is my Court Sorcerer, Merlin, and," she turns a little to gesture at Mordred, "this is Camelot's Ambassador to the Druids, the Crown Prince Mordred Pendragon, who is of Druid origin himself."

Mordred descends the steps at this cue: he places a hand over his heart and gives a small bow. "May the Goddess bless our meeting."

"And may her blessings keep us long in life."

He bows his head, and extends a hand to the Druid leader. "It is my pleasure to welcome you to the city of Camelot."

Kara takes his hand, smiling. "It is good to see you again, Mordred."

Her eyes light up, and Mordred smiles back.

The first thing he sees is golden.


	23. Notes

I started writing Seolfren in its original form almost a full year ago, in December of 2019. This story began initially as an attempt to rewrite the fifth season of Merlin, starting with when Mordred rejoins the story and with the intent of reaching a more satisfying ending, as well as allowing a peek into Mordred's perspective. Since then, it has grown and evolved into something much larger, much more ambitious and much more personal. For the past ten months, this story has been my ambition, my never-ending project and my greatest inspiration: it has started and stopped, been rewritten and revitalised, and gotten me through everything that's been going on in the world and in my life. I never would've made it to the end without the support of so many of my friends, so a round of thanks is in order.

Thank you to my partner Sophie for being my endless support, anchor and motivation. Thank you to my best friend Katie for your input and chatter on Arthuriana, legend, historical anachronism and the general ridiculousness of all this. Thank you to my wonderful friends Sarah and Aria for endlessly encouraging my writing, giving me distractions to work on when I needed a palate cleanser and being the best cheerleaders anyone could ask for. Y'all are the best pair of siblings I know. Thank you to everyone in the Merlin comm over on Pillowfort for always sparking my inspiration and love for this show. A particular thanks must go to the lovely Deadpool, whose chats about canon, headcanons and AUs helped me recapture my love for writing in this fandom. And finally, a huge thank you to the organisers of the Merlin Canon Fest, which gave me a deadline and actually got me to finish the damn thing.

Inspiration for this work came from a ton of different places. First and foremost, credit must be given to Alexander Vlahos for his stellar portrayal of Mordred in season five that made me fall in love with the character in the first place. The wonderful fic ["Spark" by Rastaban](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5997763) was a major inspiration for the style and structure, and if you have even a passing interest in Magic: The Gathering, you should absolutely read it. The characterisation of Merlin and Mordred was informed by a lot of excellent work in this fandom, but a special shout-out goes to ["Set In Stone" by EachPeachPearPlum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3552056) as an absolutely wonderful look at their relationship. The guild themes of the Magic: The Gathering Arena OST had a strong influence on the emotions of this story: in particular, Mordred's song was [Dimir Theme](https://youtu.be/xYIuEAd-m2E), the song of the mountains of Ascetir was [Selesnya Theme](https://youtu.be/IsAnTNdkKgA) and Camelot's song was [Orzhov Theme](https://youtu.be/qU4Hf4yqJqM). The idea of Kara and Mordred as siblings was inspired by a remark to the same effect from the excellent [episode of Merlisten about Mordred](https://merlisten.parakaproductions.com/episode-14-character-study-mordred/); Kara is depicted as autistic in this fic, inspired by some of Alexandra Downling's acting choices in her episode, and also because I said so.

If you would like to remix, translate, podfic or otherwise create more fanwork based on this work, or if you'd just like to chat or ask about the work more privately than in the comments, please do drop me an email at vacanthands@gmail.com, or come and talk to me on [my Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/vacanthands).

The usage of the terms heart-sweet and heart-still was a topic I deliberated for a good while about including in this story. However, given that the whole of Merlin is an exercise in creative anachronism, I decided that it would not be out of place to have linguistically appropriate terms to describe queerness. Neither term has any basis in history, though the decision to use the word sweet to refer to being queer was inspired by similar usage of language in Shakespearean English. Neither term is intended as a one-to-one translation of modern terminology, but roughly speaking, heart-sweet is intended to refer to women who show interest in people other than just men, or men who show interest in people other than just women, which we might now call gay or bi, and heart-still is intended to refer to those who do not show interest in relationships, which we might now call aromantic or asexual (or both).

All Old English has been taken either from the [Old English Translator](https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/) or from the [archive of canon spells on the Merlin Wiki](https://merlin.fandom.com/wiki/Spells). I apologise if there are any inaccuracies. Seolfren is the Old English word meaning "made of silver". Mordred and Kara's familiar, Drút, is the Old English word for "friend" or "beloved one". Names of characters have been shamelessly borrowed from friends and acquaintances, as well as being utterly invented: no resemblance is intended to anyone, with the exception of Mordred's horse, who was described according to the horse Mordred is seen riding in The Disir, and was named after my friend's cat. Rest in peace, dear Glenside.

Since we see precious little of the Druids in the show, all information surrounding them is a mixture of show details and personal headcanon. In particular, the manner of the Goddesses and Gods in Merlin is extremely vague, so I have gone with a loose interpretation, repurposing some of the Gods mentioned in canon and inventing others. The Silver Goddess is the Goddess of peace and of the Druids, so it is her to whom the Druids - and Mordred - give prayer first and foremost. However, they pray to many of the other deities as well, according to the nature of the prayer. The location of the various Druid camps and groups, as well as the Cauldron of Arianrhod, is loosely based on [the map of Camelot](https://merlin.fandom.com/wiki/Camelot?file=51.jpg): however, Merlin as a show plays pretty fast and loose with its geography, so I must ask readers to forgive me for doing the same. Descriptions of both the landscape and the soundscape of Camelot's outlying lands, and in particular the valley and cave in the mountains of Ascetir, are lifted from my experiences hiking and camping in the highlands of my native Scotland. It is was my deepest and most sincere desire to capture the serenity and awesome isolation of such places, and I can only hope I have done my country justice in this regard.

The dates and timing of some events have been handwaved or changed in order to fit the story, but I have tried to stay as true to canon as possible: however, Merlin is pretty vague about its timelines. For the sake of simplicity, and knowing how they were playing out in this fic, I determined that there would be one year between season one and two, two years between seasons two and three, two years between seasons three and four, and four years between seasons four and five. At the opening of season five, Mordred is twenty-one, Kara twenty-three, Merlin twenty-five, Arthur twenty-nine, Gwen thirty and Morgana thirty-one.

This story was always written first and foremost for myself, so I cannot guess in the slightest how it may make other people feel. No matter what takeaway you glean from this - if indeed you take any message at all - I hope you find a meaning that satisfies you. Fate, you are your own.


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